Seems like overkill/inefficient to run a gas engine and diesel engine. The electric requirements are so small but it would for sure work. I'm just gonna run mine on a little Jackery and I have two tiny inverter gennies.
If your gonna run a gen you might as well just use an electric heater. That's how we heat our FWC during a couple of cold trips where we need the gen for other things.
I was only thinking inverter because I have one but yes such a small amount of power needed, batteries would work great too I bet.
The genny could be used for other things as well, kills 2 stones with 1 bird. That was my thought
I'll bring one of mine for other things, but I also have solar to charge the Jackery and the solar works while I'm away from camp when I wouldn't want to run the gennie. Oddly enough the slow purr of the inverter gennies really helps me sleep at night so I suspect I'll miss it as I'd always run all night with my pop-up camper. If you don't already own the batteries then bringing the gennie will be cheaper than buying batteries since you mentioned you're already bringing the generator. Running it all night for the heater may mean bringing extra unleaded. Another thing to note is these diesel heaters apparently don't handle sudden power loss well without going through shutdown (I guess the heating element gets too hot without the fan?) so if you have a gennie issue or it runs out of fuel you could have other problems.
I bought this one based on this thread, I think @svivian also did too?
I have ran one off of a generator when my power supply dropped below 12V and couldn’t make it through the start up cycle. Start up cycle pulls 120-140W then drops to 20-30W to run on mine. The one I have comes with a power cord for a standard battery or 110v that is easy to swap out. It wasn’t very efficient just because I burned a couple gallons of gas over night that wasn’t needed.
I'll be over your way for the next week if you want to come fiddle with it
Yes, it's an either/or and I have mine wired directly to the battery with a 100w solar panel on it for the last week and it's a game changer. I've not seen it drop below 12.4v on cloudy day and usually it's at 12.7v when I check it. I'll never big-tent camp without this thing. It's only been getting to about 20 every night so I've run it on low (1.4) the entire time and the rent is almost too hot. Wife stayed in camp a couple days and heater ran for 3 days non-stop. So far since Saturday I've used about 2 gallons of diesel (plus came in with a full tank). Get you some cinder blocks or something to set it up on. The exhaust pipe gets HOT.
Yup. I can take some pics of the booklet that came with mine if it helps. There's a couple different controller types. For mine it has two buttons and makes no sense. In essence yes if it's in the regular mode you just power it on and it goes. If you press the other button it can go into a thermostat mode or something that uses way more battery because the glow plug has to light up every time it turns on. Regular constant mode it's only running the fan. Long press on the power button to turn it off and it goes through a power down procedure to cool off, don't disconnect the battery until it's done. The other button if you press it then it will switch modes. The power button if you rotate it then it will crank the power up or down.
Not sure what the toolbox style is but I put a plastic folding table over mine. It snowed a few times, got 3" one night and it did fine. It wasn't waterproof obviously and heater got some snow on it but didn't seem to bother it.
