Like most people I was sceptical of the imported Chinese diesel heaters and was an advocate of the more reputable brand names of Eberspacher and Webasto. However, having worked with both Eberspacher and the imported versions I have a good perspective on the pros & cons of the two types.

Obviously the first consideration and the one most people will be influenced by is PRICE. A typical Chinese diesel heater on eBay or Amazon at the time of writing this post is around £78 – £80 for the full kit up to 8kw. Whereas the Eberspacher 4kw heater kit will cost from £849 to £1995 depending on the supplier.

Cost isn’t everything I hear you say, what about reliability and parts? Going back to my experiences with the Eberspacher heaters. At my place of work, we have two vessels with Eberspaecher heaters, one vessel with two D4’s and the other vessel, has a new D2 in the wheelhouse (well new in the last 3 years). When they are working, they work well but it seemed that as soon as the cold weather rolled in when we really needed them, they would not run and displayed an error message “H1 service”. We would call the company who supplied and fitted the equipment, and they would come and invariably take them away, leaving us without heat for a week or more. The cost of the service this year was £130 with a recommendation that as the fault codes being displayed indicated a motor issue however, they could also have been generated by a faulty CPU. The cost of replacing either of these items would be in the region of £500 and as it could not be determined which of these would fix the issue, we may have ended up paying for both. It was suggested that it would be prudent to install a new unit.
We have not had this unit repaired and we are not replacing it. Having spent more than the purchase price each year on parts and repairs the company I work for sought an alternative heating source by way of an electric fan heater running off of a 3000w inverter but that’s a story for another post. They would not entertain the idea of replacing the Eberspacher with a Chinese import as they have a duty of care to their employees and have to be able to show paperwork for the installation to show that it meets UK safety standards.

My Own Boat

On my own boat was a Chinese diesel heater that had been installed in a cupboard prior to me purchasing the boat. It was working but as I was unsure of the age or quality of the installation and being that the two exhaust joints were in the boat accommodation area, I opted to replace it.

My first thought was to buy one from eBay but when I found I could buy the same unit from Amazon I went with this option as I felt more confident that if I had any issues with my product, I would find a more favourable resolution with Amazon than chasing a Chinese supplier through eBay.

I was relocating the heater to a new position on the vessel, so the short 60cm exhaust that came with the installation kit was not going to be long enough. I therefore purchased a 200cm exhaust from Amazon for £10.99 and I also bought a 200cm length of fiberglass exhaust lagging to insulate the new installation.

Although the kit comes with everything needed to install the heater, I did purchase new stainless steel hose clips as the ones supplied were of dubious quality. I also positioned it on an old baking tray sandwiching a sheet of fireboard between that and the shelf it was installed on for good measure.

The heater was installed 9 months ago and has been in regular use. It’s also been 100% reliable and I can’t fault it …so far.

Now that I’m obviously an expert having installed a couple of heaters and dissecting another, I was approached by a friend who had a similar heater installed in his VW camper that wasn’t working. He asked if I could take a look at it. The unit was 3 years old and although had been working a couple of months prior, was now just blowing cold air and wouldn’t shut down.

A couple of YouTube videos later I had surmised that the thermostat was faulty, telling the unit that it was too hot. Therefore, the fan was running continuously to cool it down.

Once again Amazon to the rescue. A mere £6.99 with next day delivery and my friend’s campervan was warm and toasty once more.

Another friend (yes ironically both my friends have diesel heaters) had an issue with his control panel and £15.00 later he was up and running again.

The control panel has gone up in price now and at the time of writing this post is a staggering £26 but for £28 you can get the control panel, motherboard and remote control.

As a comparison, we recently had the control unit replaced on one of the branded units on one of the vessels I work on, and it was over £300.

In Conclusion

Financially it’s a no brainer, you can buy a new Chinese Diesel Heater for less than the price of a service for a branded heater. The parts are so cheap that maintenance is also not an issue.

However, there is the safety factor to consider.

Obviously for these units to be sold at the fraction of the cost of the branded units we could assume that the materials used to manufacture these heaters is of an inferior quality to the branded units that comply with the EC safety directives.

Having said that, I personally am not a wealthy man and the cost of owning a boat is high enough as it is, so I will continue to use my Chinese import with these caveats in place.

I will only run heater while I’m in attendance and not overnight while we are sleeping. I will also keep carbon monoxide monitors at the two areas where the exhaust joints are.

I feel that with these control measures in place, I will reap the benefits of a nice warm cabin without the eye-popping price tag.

My advice would be if money is no object, then go for quality but if you’re on a tight budget then a Chinese diesel heater with a few safeguards in place is the way to go.

I haven’t heard of any boats or motorhomes going up in flames as a result of Chinese Diesel Heaters.

Please let me know of any cases that you’ve heard of and we will share them here to give people a more informed choice.

My Resources

If you decide to go the same route as I did, I have listed a few links to the Amazon pages from where I sourced them.

I did a lot of homework before deciding on these products and at the time of writing this blog they were no cheaper on eBay than the ones I bought on Amazon.  I prefer Amazon as, especially with Chinese imports, I have been caught out when trying to get a refund for a faulty item. An international seller will often say that they will give you a full refund once they receive the item back. However, when you get the return information you find that it’s going to cost you £30 or more to return it, only to hope that they will uphold their end of the deal and return your money. There have been occasions where the international seller has stated that unfortunately the item, they received was damaged and no refund can be issued. To be honest I’ve had this situation with an Amazon International seller but after a few emails back and forth, where I am just going round in circles with the seller, Amazon steps in and says, “sorry for your inconvenience” and issues a full refund telling me not to worry about returning the item. Obviously, I cannot guarantee that this will definitely be the case in all situations, but personal experience leans me heavily towards Amazon. 

Full disclosure if you buy from Amazon using one of my links, I will receive a very small amount of commission. However, I can assure you that all the items recommended have been purchased by me and installed on my boat.

Good luck and if you need any help check out my other blog on Diesel Heater Boat Installation