Glad I found your channel. You hit so many of my interests, such as water heating, diesel fuel, and Arduino automation. I've just started playing around with the Chinese diesel air heaters, but I guarantee you a diesel water heater is in my future.
Maybe adding an automatic air bleeder thing like those on central heating pumps for the fuel could help with air bubbles in the fuel, though the smoke show is rather impressive, but I'm sure not good for the lungs to be breathing in diesel vapours... :P
Great series, I have a comment about the MOSFET, you are correct that you need flyback control, and that is a diodes roll in the circuit, but the MOSFET is a high power transistor, there should be some other components that tame flyback. I'm pulling this from when I built a Megasquirt EFI unit, MOSFETs are used for the ground circuit of the injectors, and there was a flyback components in that system too. The half watt resistor is just a heavier duty part, helps reduce the heat of a 1/4 watt part, in the Megasquirt there was a 1/4 watt resistor that I noticed was looking at little darker than when it was installed, so I touched it to see how hot it was, and proceeded to brand the end of my finger 😮 Leson learned. Keep up the great shows and experiments 👍
FWIW on resistors - if you have a half watt resistor you can increase its rating to ~3W by giving it 15-20mm of lead spacing off the board - fairly common practice if you think you're going to be pushing your resistors hardish (and it stops scorching the board)
Could you run a large diameter fuel line from the tank to the heater, with a loop to catch those tiny bubbles? The fuel would be flowing much slower, and they could collect together. I suppose you'd need some way to purge the air eventually. Maybe an upside down float bowl or water separator?
Nice work David. Have you heard of the hour shower 2.0? It’s a recirculating pump, thermal mixing valve and heat exchanger combo with water filtering that allows you to take long showers by recirculating a half gallon of shower water. It’s featured on the TH-cam channel Gone Boondocking. A little short on details, but worth a look.
David McLuckie, apparently yes. On googling it seems like there are various independent versions of this. Loop shower, shower loop, endless shower, recycle shower etc. same basic concept.
The hour shower looks a lot less complicated than showerloop. So you could add a arduino controlled shower into the hour shower doing away with hot and cold mixing. It would just be an loop of filtered water running through the system. Interesting.
**** is there any possibly of adding a feature where if the tank gets low (set limit) then shut down sequence would commence. Just so that you don’t run out of water and over heat everything. Cheers
One if the tests was to run it out of water and see what it does. As soon as it gets to 50ºC it starts it shutdown which involves running the combustion fan until the exhaust temp is less that 80ºC. Overheating the unit isn't a worry as they are designed to be run at engine coolant temperature and that can hit 110ºC.
Hi David, great video- do you think you could install a means to adjust the temperature of the shower whilst showering? -perhaps a rotary variable resistor connected to the Arduino that turns the target temperature from say, 30 degrees to 45 degrees? Also- what is the lowest temp you can run it at (what is the minimum fuelling/ fan speed)- guessing you might need glow plug one constantly (would this damage it)?
THE EPIC adventure comes to an end ! The shot of the "Device " ( @ 13:16 ) looks alot like one of Ellon Musks rocket engines !! Hey ,David, How about a whole new series of concentrating all the parts down to as few as possible, and compact to fit in a small compartment in a RV van!!??? This has been fun !
Hi David, great work and have loved the series of videos on this project, I have watched with excitement and then re-coded everything in python and made my own controller with PT100 exhaust temp sensor, I'm still tinkering for maximum smoke at the moment but wondered what sort of temperature rise you get with the added heat exchanger? My finished design will have a bespoke pcb inside the heater with Wifi access for control and adjustments, eventually it will be used as for a loop shower within a camper van.
This is the heat exchanger I'm using - www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Stainless-steel-Swimming-pool-HEAT-EXCHANGER-16-KW-55-Kbtu/322689875881?hash=item4b21d0bfa9:m:mz_Uyfu9wrDUJbg-2Vtsi0A Rated to 16KW, obviously that is input dependant. But on the Webasto it takes the 250ºC exhaust down to warm wait leaving it. And a lot of condensation.
WOW a great set of videos. Any idea what sort of flow rate you had out of the shower? Looking to use a heater to heat water from ambient in winter to 50deg C at about 5L/min. Do you think this would work without the heat exchanger? Cheers for the vids and any help you can provide.
Hi David, I would be interested in having a board from you, have been watching your heater and webasto videos for a while and really interested in making one myself, I've already bought the components would rather have a printed board compared to a bread/prototype board. Top work and thanks for sharing 👍
Hi Dave, great video. I have been following this series very closely because I am wanting to install something like this into my RV/caravan. My hot water source tank will be 151.5 liters-ish. my source tank will have a "Low water" sensor that will tell the system to start filling the source tank to a safe level then once it reaches the "Safe Water level" sensor it will stop filling the source tank. I would like to setup a water bypass. When the pumps are pumping and the shower head is off, the hot water will be redirected back to the water source tank, when the shower head is on, naturally, the water goes to the shower head. This brings me to my question. I went to the Arduino website and they have many different types of boards listed. What model of the Arduino board do you have? This will give me a starting point as to what board I will need to look at. As always, your awesome. And many thanks.
Hey man, amazing proyect. im wondering if its posible to buy it, i meant, if can u build one and i can pay for it, i have a few heathers but the ecu arent working and i dont have de skils to bud oe of those arduino thing. thanks and congrats
Hi David, tried on Facebook but I thought I'd double my chances. I'm interested in making this to run a Chinese diesel heater, it is possible to get PCBs made much more cheaply but the cad for the board needs to be supplied as a Gerber file. Wondering if the designer is able or willing to convert or redo? It'll lower the cost considerably. Cheers :)
So I've been playing with your design for a little while and adapting it to fit my use. I'm using thermo top c to keep my workshop warm (added radiators and a heat exchanger). So far it's working flawlessly except for one thing ( I'm hoping you guys can help me figure it out). Once the water temp. reaches the set value (70°C) the board starts shut down sequence , after that only the water pump is left workin. I'm aware that the code was made specifically for shower scenarios. But could someone help me edit it in a way that keeps the webasto running and keeping the water at desired temperature?
Hi Dave Do you have any experience/views on Clarke products I’ve just purchased a Clarke 150 pressure washer got a bit annoyed with my cold water pressure washer. Thanks Steve.
Hi Dave Thanks I wish I had got some more advice now before I purchased it but I was going on owner reviews Dave well Atleast I’m under warranty for a year. By the way is the hot pressure washer you repaired still working well. Thanks Steve.
Yes. But you'll have to add something to the water to kill bacteria. If you warm the water enough you could end up with nasty things living in the nice warm water.
Is it possible to use the china diesel heater controller to control the webasto fan and pump? Arduino can do the exhaust/water temp and water pump speed.
@@DavidMcLuckie is the webasto so much different to chinees heaters? certain set airflow and pump speed makes fire with minimum smoke? or is it the different sensors to control it?
It's the fan speed sensor. The air heater has magnets in the fan which the ECU uses to keep the speed constant. You'd need to some way of telling the air heater ecu that the water heater fan was spinning and the rpm roughly matching what it would have been on the air heater.
@@DavidMcLuckie thanx David, I enjoyed your path of testing heating things of all kinds. I also started with waste oil burners. Diesel air heater is now heating my workshop. Next thing is to heat my house water buffer with webasto and Arduino. Only 2 years behind :D
Any chance of some experiments in how quiet you could get one of these diesel heaters to run? my Webasto sounds like the Avro Vulcan howl at full send.
@@andrewradford6267 more sound dampening the roar of the exhaust, combustion intake, heated air intake and so on. The Webasto doesn't have the "advanced" controller like the Chinese version so even at half heat it's still same sound level as full blast.
Ahh I see exhaust wrapping. This unit can be throttled back with the ardunio project and adjusted to be quiet at lower power. I assume you have the standard full bore ECU it comes with? Does your unit use the rubber mounts or is it straight bolted to the frame? Would be interesting to see what the difference if wrapping it etc is.
You'll need all of these - bitbucket.org/davidmcluckie/arduino-shower/src/master/low_smoke/ Open low_smoke.ino in your Arduino editor and the rest will be added automatically.
Love it! Really made me smile! You might consider getting some boards made at JLCPCB. They do 5 or 10 for $5 + shipping (probably about $9). You can lay out the board at easyeda.com and it will upload the files for you.
From running the O2 sensor in the other heater I don't think it would add any useful input. But that's not to say I won't do more things in the future. With new boards and controllers.
Glad I found your channel. You hit so many of my interests, such as water heating, diesel fuel, and Arduino automation. I've just started playing around with the Chinese diesel air heaters, but I guarantee you a diesel water heater is in my future.
Loving the Vulcan howl. Best wishes from Northern Ireland.
That's fantastic, I thought my Webasto was beyond repair. Thanks for the video. I hope I will be able to get this to work on mine.
Maybe adding an automatic air bleeder thing like those on central heating pumps for the fuel could help with air bubbles in the fuel, though the smoke show is rather impressive, but I'm sure not good for the lungs to be breathing in diesel vapours... :P
Beautiful unit 👍👏
Great series, I have a comment about the MOSFET, you are correct that you need flyback control, and that is a diodes roll in the circuit, but the MOSFET is a high power transistor, there should be some other components that tame flyback.
I'm pulling this from when I built a Megasquirt EFI unit, MOSFETs are used for the ground circuit of the injectors, and there was a flyback components in that system too.
The half watt resistor is just a heavier duty part, helps reduce the heat of a 1/4 watt part, in the Megasquirt there was a 1/4 watt resistor that I noticed was looking at little darker than when it was installed, so I touched it to see how hot it was, and proceeded to brand the end of my finger 😮 Leson learned. Keep up the great shows and experiments 👍
FWIW on resistors - if you have a half watt resistor you can increase its rating to ~3W by giving it 15-20mm of lead spacing off the board - fairly common practice if you think you're going to be pushing your resistors hardish (and it stops scorching the board)
Could you run a large diameter fuel line from the tank to the heater, with a loop to catch those tiny bubbles? The fuel would be flowing much slower, and they could collect together. I suppose you'd need some way to purge the air eventually. Maybe an upside down float bowl or water separator?
Nice work David. Have you heard of the hour shower 2.0? It’s a recirculating pump, thermal mixing valve and heat exchanger combo with water filtering that allows you to take long showers by recirculating a half gallon of shower water. It’s featured on the TH-cam channel Gone Boondocking. A little short on details, but worth a look.
Is that like the loop shower (showerloop)? The filter system looks expensive.
David McLuckie, apparently yes. On googling it seems like there are various independent versions of this. Loop shower, shower loop, endless shower, recycle shower etc. same basic concept.
P.S. the filter that’s used for the ‘hour shower’ Camco 40042 is $37 US.
The hour shower looks a lot less complicated than showerloop. So you could add a arduino controlled shower into the hour shower doing away with hot and cold mixing. It would just be an loop of filtered water running through the system. Interesting.
Should switch to the 2mm hard nylon fuel line after pump. Drastically improves fuel pump pushing power.
very cool. I like this project very much!
**** is there any possibly of adding a feature where if the tank gets low (set limit) then shut down sequence would commence. Just so that you don’t run out of water and over heat everything.
Cheers
One if the tests was to run it out of water and see what it does. As soon as it gets to 50ºC it starts it shutdown which involves running the combustion fan until the exhaust temp is less that 80ºC. Overheating the unit isn't a worry as they are designed to be run at engine coolant temperature and that can hit 110ºC.
David McLuckie good man. Thanks for that! I’d be interested in a board if you make them.
Hi David, great video- do you think you could install a means to adjust the temperature of the shower whilst showering? -perhaps a rotary variable resistor connected to the Arduino that turns the target temperature from say, 30 degrees to 45 degrees? Also- what is the lowest temp you can run it at (what is the minimum fuelling/ fan speed)- guessing you might need glow plug one constantly (would this damage it)?
At the time fuel wasn't the issue with the lowest temperature I could get. Getting a water pump to go slowly enough was the problem.
THE EPIC adventure comes to an end ! The shot of the "Device " ( @ 13:16 ) looks alot like one of Ellon Musks rocket engines !! Hey ,David, How about a whole new series of concentrating all the parts down to as few as possible, and compact to fit in a small compartment in a RV van!!??? This has been fun !
Hi David, great work and have loved the series of videos on this project, I have watched with excitement and then re-coded everything in python and made my own controller with PT100 exhaust temp sensor, I'm still tinkering for maximum smoke at the moment but wondered what sort of temperature rise you get with the added heat exchanger? My finished design will have a bespoke pcb inside the heater with Wifi access for control and adjustments, eventually it will be used as for a loop shower within a camper van.
This is the heat exchanger I'm using - www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Stainless-steel-Swimming-pool-HEAT-EXCHANGER-16-KW-55-Kbtu/322689875881?hash=item4b21d0bfa9:m:mz_Uyfu9wrDUJbg-2Vtsi0A
Rated to 16KW, obviously that is input dependant. But on the Webasto it takes the 250ºC exhaust down to warm wait leaving it. And a lot of condensation.
@@DavidMcLuckie how about using a car EGR heat exchanger from a breaker? These run £10-15. Even new ones are cheap
Love this stuff...now what do we do?
WOW a great set of videos. Any idea what sort of flow rate you had out of the shower? Looking to use a heater to heat water from ambient in winter to 50deg C at about 5L/min. Do you think this would work without the heat exchanger? Cheers for the vids and any help you can provide.
V stands for Venturi, the shape of the burning chamber.
Hi David, I would be interested in having a board from you, have been watching your heater and webasto videos for a while and really interested in making one myself, I've already bought the components would rather have a printed board compared to a bread/prototype board. Top work and thanks for sharing 👍
Hi Dave, great video.
I have been following this series very closely because I am wanting to install something like this into my RV/caravan. My hot water source tank will be 151.5 liters-ish. my source tank will have a "Low water" sensor that will tell the system to start filling the source tank to a safe level then once it reaches the "Safe Water level" sensor it will stop filling the source tank.
I would like to setup a water bypass. When the pumps are pumping and the shower head is off, the hot water will be redirected back to the water source tank, when the shower head is on, naturally, the water goes to the shower head. This brings me to my question.
I went to the Arduino website and they have many different types of boards listed. What model of the Arduino board do you have? This will give me a starting point as to what board I will need to look at.
As always, your awesome. And many thanks.
That's an Arduino mini Pro. It's a pretty cheap Arduino. For general projects I use the teensey 3.2
Hi David, this is the past calling. We're thinking of encouraging a lot more travel from Cathay - anything we ought to know about? Cheers.
Hey man, amazing proyect.
im wondering if its posible to buy it, i meant, if can u build one and i can pay for it, i have a few heathers but the ecu arent working and i dont have de skils to bud oe of those arduino thing.
thanks and congrats
Hi David, kann man die webaszo auch zum heizen einer Badewanne oder eines intex whirlpool verwenden und wenn ja wie wird diese angesteuert ?
Hi David, tried on Facebook but I thought I'd double my chances. I'm interested in making this to run a Chinese diesel heater, it is possible to get PCBs made much more cheaply but the cad for the board needs to be supplied as a Gerber file. Wondering if the designer is able or willing to convert or redo? It'll lower the cost considerably.
Cheers :)
So I've been playing with your design for a little while and adapting it to fit my use. I'm using thermo top c to keep my workshop warm (added radiators and a heat exchanger). So far it's working flawlessly except for one thing ( I'm hoping you guys can help me figure it out). Once the water temp. reaches the set value (70°C) the board starts shut down sequence , after that only the water pump is left workin. I'm aware that the code was made specifically for shower scenarios. But could someone help me edit it in a way that keeps the webasto running and keeping the water at desired temperature?
Yes, that should be a fairly simple edit in the code. If you send me an email I'll try and sort something for you. me@davidmcluckie.com
I got the same project, did you solve the problem?
Nice Car ....
Oh and the video is great too..
Hi Dave
Do you have any experience/views on Clarke products I’ve just purchased a Clarke 150 pressure washer got a bit annoyed with my cold water pressure washer. Thanks Steve.
I know they mostly don't make anything and tend to just rebrand cheap stuff and charge a premium.
Hi Dave
Thanks I wish I had got some more advice now before I purchased it but I was going on owner reviews Dave well Atleast I’m under warranty for a year.
By the way is the hot pressure washer you repaired still working well.
Thanks Steve.
could you put a 2 way zone valve on the water so it recirculates till up to temperature rather than wasting water?
Yes. But you'll have to add something to the water to kill bacteria. If you warm the water enough you could end up with nasty things living in the nice warm water.
Have you measured the output and efficiency?
hello david,,great job,how can i find and make this control unit?please let me to know,many thanks
There is a page on my website. But it's literally for making it into a shower. I'm planning to do more with the Webastos soon.
Is it possible to use the china diesel heater controller to control the webasto fan and pump? Arduino can do the exhaust/water temp and water pump speed.
Not easily no.
@@DavidMcLuckie is the webasto so much different to chinees heaters? certain set airflow and pump speed makes fire with minimum smoke? or is it the different sensors to control it?
It's the fan speed sensor. The air heater has magnets in the fan which the ECU uses to keep the speed constant. You'd need to some way of telling the air heater ecu that the water heater fan was spinning and the rpm roughly matching what it would have been on the air heater.
@@DavidMcLuckie thanx David, I enjoyed your path of testing heating things of all kinds. I also started with waste oil burners. Diesel air heater is now heating my workshop. Next thing is to heat my house water buffer with webasto and Arduino. Only 2 years behind :D
Any chance of some experiments in how quiet you could get one of these diesel heaters to run? my Webasto sounds like the Avro Vulcan howl at full send.
Like slow it down?
@@andrewradford6267 more sound dampening the roar of the exhaust, combustion intake, heated air intake and so on. The Webasto doesn't have the "advanced" controller like the Chinese version so even at half heat it's still same sound level as full blast.
Ahh I see exhaust wrapping.
This unit can be throttled back with the ardunio project and adjusted to be quiet at lower power.
I assume you have the standard full bore ECU it comes with? Does your unit use the rubber mounts or is it straight bolted to the frame? Would be interesting to see what the difference if wrapping it etc is.
Yep a kettle of hot water in the storage tank would be simpler may be safer
Portable disco and shower mate
Hi David, great video , I am having trouble downloading the source code, can you help please. Paul
You'll need all of these - bitbucket.org/davidmcluckie/arduino-shower/src/master/low_smoke/
Open low_smoke.ino in your Arduino editor and the rest will be added automatically.
@@DavidMcLuckie Thank you David , let the fun begin .
Any reason why you didn't just use a calorifier?
I was interested in having hot water 'on demand' rather than having a tank of hot water.
Man, way to butcher that Webasto heater pump... I might have a few of those connectors laying around if you'd like.
I don't know what you mean.
@@DavidMcLuckie Haha, I'm referring to the plastic being 'persuaded' out of the way of the pump terminal pins... @ 4:50 for reference :)
Can we watch a video of you cranking this up till destruction? Place a bet on what will happen.
Love it! Really made me smile! You might consider getting some boards made at JLCPCB. They do 5 or 10 for $5 + shipping (probably about $9). You can lay out the board at easyeda.com and it will upload the files for you.
Wait, you can’t end the project now. You haven’t added the oxygen sensor yet.
From running the O2 sensor in the other heater I don't think it would add any useful input. But that's not to say I won't do more things in the future. With new boards and controllers.
or the nitrous
:)
I think features like low water, screen display and loop back into the tank are possible but it needs the demand or request for them to be done.