Gearlasso 8kW 12/24v dc 240v ac. A cheap diesel heater from Amazon. It seems good enough but it's got to be installed well.
- oldmanwith
- 12 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Just so you're aware, there's a link to buy the model I have at the bottom of the page and because of that this blog post is considered as advertising.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Ok, that's the necessary out of the way, let's get on
I've had a diesel heater for years, an original Eberspacher Airtronic D2 that I bought secondhand originally to fit in my van when I used to go kayaking. But I broke it a while back and decided I would replace it with one of the cheaper chinese imports. From what I read, the original patents for the Eberspacher and Webasto versions expired and Chinese manufacturers saw an opportunity.
So, right now there's an avalanche of advertising on social media for these and of course once you've watched one "video" you'll get a dozen more suggested.
Now it seems "Influencers" on social media see an opportunity to make money by selling them which is fine but one of my concerns is that some of the advertising might give people ideas that might be a little sketchy so I wanted to post a bit of info saying "look people, these really need to be installed properly because if they're not it can be potentially dangerous.
And to be very clear, I'm not suggesting in any way that the units themselves are dangerous. It's all about the use and installation.
As is often the case I started out with a video on YouTube and this post is to give people the chance to ask questions outside of social media (and also so I can give you the Amazon link with getting my video flagged as advertising)
In the videos I mention (a lot) the necessity to install the exhaust correctly and there are two real points that I wanted to get across.
1: The language (and thus the instruction) in the manual is a little bit odd at times and thus not easy to follow.
2: Any device that burns a fuel of some kind (diesel / petrol / propane / butane / lpg / lng / wood / coal the list goes on) will emit products of combustion from the exhaust. These are generally dangerous and have to be routed outside of the space you're in to be released into the open air. Among other things, these heaters produce carbon monoxide which is odourless, tasteless, invisible, lighter than air and poisonous.
It's January 2026 as I type this and right now there are posts on social media (with purchase links) that show people with these heaters standing on a kitchen bench, in the middle of a tent, in the back of a camper and many other locations and the critical thing is they don't show any exhaust pipe OR the fact that said exhaust pipe MUST go outside the space that's being heated and be released "safely" into atmosphere.
There's a fairly consistent theme throughout my videos and blogs that I generally don't tell people what they should do, I'm very much "this is what I did, if you want to do the same, that's your choice but I'd much rather you understood WHY I did it the way I did". This is very much the same. I'm not going to tell anyone how to install one of these heaters, I'm just going to indicate where I went looking for information and how I put that information into practice.
A long time ago I was involved in the heating industry and I have some pre-learned knowledge and experience of the products of combustion from oil and gas burners. So I already knew that what comes out of anything like this is dangerous. That's a plus point in my view. As is the fact that I already had an original Eberspacher version and I installed it as per the manufacturers instructions (for each specific application) so for me, a kind of link between the dangers of combustion products and the need to install the heater in a way that makes it safe all seems obvious and logical.
But when I look at a video of someone buying one, unboxing it, standing it on a bench in what seems like a kitchen, (or in a tent) filling it with fuel and powering it up (with what AI seems to interpret as flames coming out of the hot air outlet) and all without seeming to connect any kind of exhaust that goes outside the living space, that whole scenario doesn't convey the potential danger.
Hence the videos and this blog post.
So, my conclusions:
Much of the advertising doesn't really show what's needed in an installation, or how dangerous it might be to install badly.
The manual that came with mine isn't very clear in how the unit should be installed correctly.
There is information online that DOES explain the correct installation of something very similar. If you web search for an installation manual for an Eberspacher you'll find lots of resources, it's then a matter of figuring what documentation matches your chosen installation scenario. My old unit is an Eberspacher Airtronic D2 and I used those instructions to figure how I needed to install my new unit safely.
Quite a lot of the installation scenarios shown on social media are not deemed as acceptable in either the manual that comes with the unit OR in the guidance from sources such as 3 above. So you might need to exercise judgement in whether such a unit can be adapted for your specific needs or whether it's actually unsuitable.
And after all that, if you still think you want one like the model I bought, here's some links. Be safe 😊
Here's the purchase link for the heater itself:
I also bought some additional exhaust elbows so I can get a tight exit out from under the heater:
And a full additional exhaust setup (because of my two intended installs so I could leave the systems in place and just move the heater)
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