I’ve had my Planar Heaters 4kw diesel portable heater for several years now, and it has proven to be one of the best additions to my overlanding kit that I’ve ever made. This thing is bulletproof, ultra-efficient, works in all sorts of environmental conditions, and is easy to use, to boot.
Now, I’ve used my heater almost exclusively for tent camping (I have a diesel air heater from Planar Heaters installed in the nose of my Turtleback Expedition Trailer to heat my rooftop tent). But, using a diesel portable heater for tent camping isn’t the only application for this thing. Let’s dive into a few other uses for a heater like this and explore why it’s such a sound investment!
Table of Contents
- Use a Diesel Portable Heater as a Backup for Your RV
- A Diesel Portable Heater is Great for Emergencies at Home
- Tap into the Efficiency of a Diesel Portable Heater
- A Diesel Portable Heater is a Safe Heating Option
Use a Diesel Portable Heater as a Backup for Your RV
Photo by Oleh_Slobodeniuk via iStock
Camping in an RV, travel trailer, fifth wheel, or campervan is a lot of fun. There are unparalleled comforts, not the least of which is a propane-fired furnace to keep your rig toasty warm. But what happens if the furnace malfunctions?
I’d suggest a diesel portable heater like mine as the ideal option! My 4kw diesel heater has more than enough heating capacity to keep a 30-foot RV warm. When you’re camping in the winter, in particular, having a backup heating source isn’t just vital for your comfort but it’s also necessary to ensure the water system in the RV doesn’t freeze.
Heck, even in the spring, summer, and fall, nighttime temperatures can get uncomfortably cold, so having a secondary heating source in your RV just makes sense. We can do all the preventative maintenance we want on our RVs and take them in for regular service, but you simply never know when a system like the furnace is going to go out. Enjoy greater peace of mind with a diesel portable heater at the ready!
A Diesel Portable Heater is Great for Emergencies at Home
Photo by MarianVejcik via iStock
I’m grateful to live in the U.S. where we have a reliable power grid (well, mostly…). But, again, you never know when the power is going to go out due to poor weather or a natural disaster. Heck, even freak accidents like an animal causing a transformer to blow up can cause blackouts that impact thousands of people.
If one of these events happens in the colder months, a diesel portable heater can come to the rescue. Now, I know a 4kw heater won’t keep an entire home at 70 degrees in the winter, but you could at least put it outside the kitchen window and vent it inside to keep the sink pipes from freezing.
And since units like the one I have from Planar Heaters are highly portable and easy to use, you could rotate it from the kitchen to the bathroom to the laundry room and so forth, keeping each area warm to prevent freezing pipes (assuming you have a window to vent the heater through, of course).
These heaters aren’t just useful for emergencies at home, though. In areas where the winter cold can be brutal, having a diesel portable heater in your vehicle could be a lifesaver. Just set the unit outside, vent it through a window, and enjoy instant, dry heat in your vehicle if you get stuck, run out of gas, or get into an accident with no immediate rescue in sight.
Tap into the Efficiency of a Diesel Portable Heater
Aside from being usable in all sorts of situations, a diesel heater is extremely efficient. My Planar Heaters unit can run all night long (about eight hours) on less than a gallon of fuel. If I have both of my two-gallon RotoPax filled with diesel when I leave on a camping trip, I’ll get roughly four full nights of sleep with my diesel heater on all night. Nice!
These heaters are also extremely efficient at heating a space quickly. As I mentioned earlier, they produce instant, dry heat, so as soon as you turn it on, you get toasty warm air inside your tent, RV, house, and so forth, with immediate improvement in the temperature of your surroundings.
Better still, you can control the temperature and fan speed using the wired remote (on my heater, anyway), so you don’t have to venture outside to make any adjustments.
Plus, these heaters use very little power – mine uses a 12-volt battery – so you don’t have to worry about losing power in the middle of the night or constantly charging the battery so you can run your heater. I can’t speak for other brands of diesel heaters, but my Planar Heaters unit has been a complete breeze to use without any worry of failure.
A Diesel Portable Heater is a Safe Heating Option
Above all, diesel heaters are safe to use. Sure, efficiency and ease of use and wide applicability are nice, but if you can’t use a heater without fear of carbon monoxide poisoning, what’s the point?!
What makes these heaters safer is that they sit outside whatever it is you’re heating and vent the warm air inside. According to Planar Heaters, this is part of the reason why you don’t have to worry about carbon monoxide poisoning. The other component of this is that the combustion chamber is completely sealed. This combination of factors makes diesel portable heaters (from Planar Heaters, anyway) completely safe to use in all the applications noted above.
Additionally, these heaters will not overheat – Planar Heaters has built an automatic shutdown feature into their heaters if they exceed the maximum operating temperature they were designed for. So, all the way around, you can rest assured you’ll have clean, dry, and safe heat! I think you can see why I’ve enjoyed my diesel portable heater so much! Visit Planar Heaters to get more details about the 4kw unit I have or the 2kw unit if you don’t need quite as much heating power.
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