Your wfp hot water set ups?

[Deleted member 257]

Any links?

If you mean for a 2kw immersion? it seems like they are fairly hard to come by. It looks like the best option is to have one custom made from heatrodshop.com , although i don't know what the cost is yet.

 

[Chris33]

@High\-tower are these not very expensive to heat up and to power? I recall reading @Njones post about them...way back!

Snowed off again here. Great fun.

 

[Deleted member 257]

@High\-tower are these not very expensive to heat up and to power? I recall reading @Njones post about them...way back!
Snowed off again here. Great fun.

I don't think they are especially expensive. 2kw costing around 25p an hour to run, i should think 7 or 8hrs on a timer during the night will keep my 350l nice and toasty.

 

[AGlassAct]

I'm fitting an immersion (3kw) to go alongside my webasto. The webasto has its uses but is very hit and miss, it decides when it wants to work. I've got a new PCB to install so hopefully that will sort it. The immersion install will cost around £100, I've got all the bits just need to find a couple of days to put it in. I will put a step by step in the tutorial bit as it seems to be the way forward - I only clean part time and work somewhere that will allow me to fill my tank and heat the water, can't ignore that kind of deal!!!

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[Chris33]

@AGlassAct that would be most helpful. Any idea on the time to heat the tank and how long it'll stay warm? It it temp controlled

Was the webasto simple to fit?

 

[spruce]

I've also been researching hot water systems. Diesel systems are good as a stand alone as they can be set up with frost protection, and can produce hot on demand. however they seem quite expensive to install and run, and have reliability issues...
gas is cheaper to buy, but doesn't offer frost protection, on hot water on demand, but require ventilation and carrying a gas bottle which can be an issue with some insurers.

Immersion heaters are cheap to fit if you go for a 2kw, a little more expensive if you choose a 3kw as they need an uprated power supply. Running costs seem to be between £2-4 over night which protects your van from frost and supply's you with warm water all day. But can't supply hot water on demand...

I'm going for a 2kw immersion, as I'm mainly aiming to prevent my system freezing on the coldest nights.

Just a product update.

The latest Spring Manufactured Froststat can be programmed for gas as well. It kicks your pump on at 2 degrees C and runs for 10 minutes. You have to have your hose reel plugged in with a return to the tank.

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[Chris33]

@spruce you seem to know a thing or two. Infact you popped up in a lot of my searches on here re wfp

Do you have any particular recommendation here? To heat a 450 litre tank that makes pure in the van.

 

[AGlassAct]

Most immersions have a built in safety and thermostat - usually set to around 65 degrees (to prevent legionella) you can adjust it to suit, my webasto heats to 50 degrees (when it works!!!). The immersion I am fitting is 3Kw, I used an online calculator to work out it would take approx 8 hours to heat 350ltrs to around 65degrees - obviously I won't be aiming for that high a temp, I've found 40 is plenty.

Online calculator:

Water heating time calculator - Process Heating Services Ltd.

The webasto's are pretty easy to install, if you have basic electrical skills, can drill a hole or two and use a screwdriver it's possible in an afternoon. I was going to look into selling kits for wfp as I estimated - for a reconditioned 5Kw burner - the bits would cost around £650, but my experience of using one isn't that positive at the moment and the portable calor alternatives seem to be a lot more reliable and cheaper to buy/fit/install.

I was hoping to do a few install guides on various things that always come up but just haven't got round to freeing up the time yet. The immersion install will definitely be up within the next few weeks though.

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[spruce]

@spruce you seem to know a thing or two. Infact you popped up in a lot of my searches on here re wfp
Do you have any particular recommendation here? To heat a 450 litre tank that makes pure in the van.

No I'm afraid not, as I don't have hot. You asked so here is my take on it. But its my opinion and only that.

I have been dabbling with a diesel heater of late but due to a number of reasons, this project has been put on the back burner. Its probably more than dabbling as I invested a lot of time and money on experimenting with a setup that would be more suited to a window cleaning application.

I had a little input into a gas heater a local fellow windie fitted but it was more of an advisory role. (I was rather ill at the time so was unable to have a hands on role.) He did have a scare as the gas regulator started leaking and filled the back of the van with gas. Another cleaner on the other forum also had the same thing happen to him. Although he replaced the regulator without further issue he removed the system as he needed the space in his van. There are a couple of windies that have gas heaters, but I belief the only safe way to run these is with the exhaust out of the roof. I believe that they also work better than a diesel heater. (A popular 8LPM gas heater generates 16kw where the 2 man diesel heater the suppliers use are 9.1kw.)

I also believe the best way of having gas is with a fixed vapour tank which you fill up at the LPG filler at the garage.

Our local petrol station has has stopped selling LPG so the closest garage supplying it is 5 miles away (10 miles round trip) which isn't very convenient. I'm also suspicious of the LPG pricing structure. 12 years ago the motor trade tried to get a promise from Government that they wouldn't tax LPG in the same way as petrol and diesel. The govt wouldn't give that commitment so for years I've always wondered when the price of gas is going to rocket due to taxation changes slipped through in the budget. Its never happened so the government ruined any chance of more LPG vehicles out there. (Government want all diesels gone and all vehicles to be petrol as they will earn far more revenue than they do now. So they never promoted the use of LPG - rather they gave it lip service.)

My initial motivation for warm water (not hot) was to make the hoses supple in winter. The first batch of minibore and later microbore got so stiff in the winter that they were very difficult to work with. So the diesel heater seed was sown. Over the next few years the manufacturing process of this hose has changed so our hose is more manageable in winter these days. Hence hot water isn't a top priority.

I spent a fair few bucks setting up a smaller Webasto 5.2kw Thermo Top C with heat exchangers but soon realised that these small Webasto heaters don't generate enough heat to give really hot water and weren't really a good unit for our work. The price of diesel was also skyrocketing so that was another disincentive as far as I was concerned. I also have a Heatwave 2 man heater which I bought as spares or repair which I got fired up. But the heat exchangers were leaking so the heater is in bits at the moment.

So that's my story of hot water.

If you want my opinion @Chris33 then I would focus on getting yourself wfp proficient and then consider these unnecessary equipment addons at a later date. I've worked with 'hot' (40 degrees) but I didn't see a justifiable difference in cleaning ability. It's easy to get drawn in by the Ionics advert of not washing your dishes in cold water, so why........................?

We have a carpet fitter we clean windows for. He had a extra LWB Sprinter van which kept breaking down. When Citylink went into liquidation, he bought one of the Transit vans. It had over 200k on the clock and was a little tatty in my opinion with a bash in the roof which was very poorly repaired and already rusting. He also paid too much money for it.

The first thing he did was to fit alloys, new tyres (the old ones still had plenty of tread), a chrome front nudge bar and side running bars. I'm guessing that lot cost a couple of grand at least. But does it help him fit carpets better? I would have spent that money on something that he needed to generate more business. I do think of hot water as all that bling on the Transit van our customer fitted. Its nice but not essential.

Fitting a gas heater is much cheaper than diesel, but to do it properly with cost around £500 - £600. Just because your current insurer is happy for you to have a gas powered heater, you may change insurance companies into the future and your new insurer may not insurer a van with a gas heater. There is also the possibility that they will need an annual gas inspection and safety certificate issued before they will insure you. They demand this of catering vans. Gas in window cleaning is still rather a grey area with regard to insurance.

I moved insurance providers as my insurance went up by a big margin. (My wife, who is also on my van insurance had an accident in her car which resulted in a claim. My insurers increased my insurance by 40%. When I removed her name from the insurance they claimed that the reason why I had such a good rate was because we had a husband and wife policy. On my own my insurance was even more expensive than the 40% extra.)

So I changed insurers. The new insurers wanted to know if I have the tank professionally fitted and did it have a frame and was it bolted through the floor. They accepted that as I had worked in the motor and engineering industries for the major portion of my life I was qualified to fit the tank myself. But I'm sure that if there is a claim, the fitment of my tank will be scrutinised.

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[spruce]

Most immersions have a built in safety and thermostat - usually set to around 65 degrees (to prevent legionella) you can adjust it to suit, my webasto heats to 50 degrees (when it works!!!). The immersion I am fitting is 3Kw, I used an online calculator to work out it would take approx 8 hours to heat 350ltrs to around 65degrees - obviously I won't be aiming for that high a temp, I've found 40 is plenty.Online calculator:

Water heating time calculator - Process Heating Services Ltd.

The webasto's are pretty easy to install, if you have basic electrical skills, can drill a hole or two and use a screwdriver it's possible in an afternoon. I was going to look into selling kits for wfp as I estimated - for a reconditioned 5Kw burner - the bits would cost around £650, but my experience of using one isn't that positive at the moment and the portable calor alternatives seem to be a lot more reliable and cheaper to buy/fit/install.

I was hoping to do a few install guides on various things that always come up but just haven't got round to freeing up the time yet. The immersion install will definitely be up within the next few weeks though.

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/emoticons/biggrin.png

You found an online calculator. I spend ages working it out.

I calculated that I needed 2.65kw to raise 1.5LPM through 25 degrees C. So I presumed that a 5KW Thermo Top C would be able to handle a 2 man system. But in practice it would only just raise the temperature by that amount for one operator. The rest of the heat of 2.3kw was getting lost, mainly out of the exhaust. That exhaust gets hot.

If I ran the pump and then started the heater it just never seemed to get above luke warm at the brush head. The heater needed to be up and running and have the internal water circuit well heated before there was any benefit at the brush head. After all that I was left rather despondent with the results.

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[Elliot]

What about hot tub heaters . Has anyone ever looked into them .

 

[Andy]

All the ones I've seen have the 20 min cut off seems it is a requirement by law. Is there a way round that or keep trolling back to van to restart.

 

[spruce]

All the ones I've seen have the 20 min cut off seems it is a requirement by law. Is there a way round that or keep trolling back to van to restart.

My response to this on another thread was:

My personal opinion is that the 20 minute cut-out was something that got blown out of all proportion. Like the weight of the Aquadapter. Someone starts something which quickly becomes "a storm in a teacup" with most of the 'mob' having no clue what its about to begin with.

Even on commercial I doubt I have ever run my pump for 20 minutes continuously. If I had a heater with a timer I would be aware of that and switch the tap/water flow off more regularly whilst moving onto the next window. Switching the tap off will stop the water flowing through the heater, switch the heater off and resets the 20 minute timer.

I don't recall seeing a post recently from anyone complaining about the 20 minute time safety feature on their gas heaters.

However @Njones responded;

The 20 min cutout was an issue for me - - mostly because even when you stop water flow between windows your pump keeps running for 10 or 15 seconds,.. the heater only cuts out when the water stops fully. So you think you'd be resetting the timer fairly regularly, but in reality on commercial jobs at least, you rarely stop the water long enough between windows for the reset to kick in.

So it could be more of an issue that I believed it to be. Our local fellow windie never complained about this, but then he uses a Spring controller that has a much finer pressure setting control than Nats pressure switch adjustment on his pump. He also used hd hose to his hose reel and his microbore hose didn't seem to expand as much as my minibore hose did on lower water temperatures when I messed around with 'hot'. My minibore hose was rubbish and stretched like anything.

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[Aqua-pure Portadown]

All the ones I've seen have the 20 min cut off seems it is a requirement by law. Is there a way round that or keep trolling back to van to restart.

if you stop water supply the heater will switch off then reignite when water flows again ,should get round ghetto w0 cut off like that ?

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[Aqua-pure Portadown]

if you stop water supply the heater will switch off then reignite when water flows again ,should get round the 20 min cut off like that ?
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My response to this on another thread was:
My personal opinion is that the 20 minute cut-out was something that got blown out of all proportion. Like the weight of the Aquadapter. Someone starts something which quickly becomes "a storm in a teacup" with most of the 'mob' having no clue what its about to begin with.

Even on commercial I doubt I have ever run my pump for 20 minutes continuously. If I had a heater with a timer I would be aware of that and switch the tap/water flow off more regularly whilst moving onto the next window. Switching the tap off will stop the water flowing through the heater, switch the heater off and resets the 20 minute timer.

I don't recall seeing a post recently from anyone complaining about the 20 minute time safety feature on their gas heaters.

However @Njones responded;

The 20 min cutout was an issue for me - - mostly because even when you stop water flow between windows your pump keeps running for 10 or 15 seconds,.. the heater only cuts out when the water stops fully. So you think you'd be resetting the timer fairly regularly, but in reality on commercial jobs at least, you rarely stop the water long enough between windows for the reset to kick in.

So it could be more of an issue that I believed it to be. Our local fellow windie never complained about this, but then he uses a Spring controller that has a much finer pressure setting control than Nats pressure switch adjustment on his pump. He also used hd hose to his hose reel and his microbore hose didn't seem to expand as much as my minibore hose did on lower water temperatures when I messed around with 'hot'. My minibore hose was rubbish and stretched like anything.

.

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[Andy]

Didn't realise it reset when the water flow stopped can't see it being a issue at all.

 

[Johnwindow1987]

I'm looking at a boiler on eBay and thinking if I got a thermostat in my van when the temp went down to freezing the thermostat cuts in and turns pump on to push water around van back in tank then in morning take the hose from tank back to hose reel or would a thermostat in the water work any thoughts thanks