Yesterday the forecast for Oak Harbor called for freezing temps this morning and that does not happen very often so I figured that would be a good change to stress test my hydronic heater. I headed out at 9:00 pm and the temp inside Papillon was 54º. I fired up the Espar S3-D5E and in 5 minutes had enough hot water to turn on the fans. After 15 minutes, the thermostat read 56º but the air was comfortable enough to take off my jacket.
I had taken my laptop along to get some work done and ended up going to bed after midnight. I turned down one fan that was louder than the rest which reduced the heat output a bit. By sunrise, the temp outside was 30º and the inside temp had dropped about 5º from the high the previous night.
The Espar was running on low burn but I was not getting enough heat out of the fan-coils to keep up. I changed the valves to the engine pre-heat settings which circulates the boiler fluid through the engine and in 10 minutes there was a 500-lb chunk of 140º iron under the settee. In the next hour the cabin warmed up and the fans shut off for the first time all night.
I used only battery for all power and after 15.5 hours, I used 87 amp-hrs for an average of 5.6 AH/hr. This was for a cold start from 54º and I had all fans running for 12 hours except for the one which only ran 6 hours. I also had the fridge on and ran the inverter to keep the laptop running due to a bad battery.
Pretty happy with that result.
I had taken my laptop along to get some work done and ended up going to bed after midnight. I turned down one fan that was louder than the rest which reduced the heat output a bit. By sunrise, the temp outside was 30º and the inside temp had dropped about 5º from the high the previous night.
The Espar was running on low burn but I was not getting enough heat out of the fan-coils to keep up. I changed the valves to the engine pre-heat settings which circulates the boiler fluid through the engine and in 10 minutes there was a 500-lb chunk of 140º iron under the settee. In the next hour the cabin warmed up and the fans shut off for the first time all night.
I used only battery for all power and after 15.5 hours, I used 87 amp-hrs for an average of 5.6 AH/hr. This was for a cold start from 54º and I had all fans running for 12 hours except for the one which only ran 6 hours. I also had the fridge on and ran the inverter to keep the laptop running due to a bad battery.
Pretty happy with that result.