Scavenging heater exhaust to warm holding tank

[AMink]

Has anyone ever heard of or tried to scavenge the exhaust from the heater to warm the holding tank? I know it would have to be contained because of the CO, but it seems that in the winter it would certainly help your tank (or even your black and grey water drains) from freezing. We get some pretty chilly temps where we camp and have frozen the drain lines to the valve. Took quite a while to thaw it enough to dump.

 

[jelag]

My RV has insulation between the tank and the bottom plastic attached to the frame. . We've had our unit down to 18* - 20* at night with the furnace and heat running... We've not had a problem... . I'll be honest in that we've had to run the furnace as we drove down the road with the fear that all the cold air running by the RV would draw the heat out so that it might freeze... . and have stopped and drained all the tanks including fresh water when we drove through temperatures lower than the 18-20* mentioned above...

I'm not sure that I'd try and dump that hot air into the area under the floor and try and add that heat to that space...

Just my thoughts. .

 

[RVTRKN]

One of the unwanted consequences of doing that would be moisture buildup. The modern Furnace with 98% efficiency has to have a condensate drain connected to the inside of the heat exchanger, to drain the condensate from cooling down (extracting the heat) of the hot gasses to almost ambient temps. Thats why some, like my Arctic Fox has the heat ducted around the holding tanks. That air is the dry recirculated air in the RV.

 

[RustyJC]

Too much likelihood of ingress of CO into the living space for me to try putting the furnace exhaust into the basement. Examples - look where the water supply and drain lines penetrate the floor. Is EVERY line sealed absolutely airtight, or are some rattling around in some pretty crude cutouts in the floor??



Rusty

 

[AMink]

I would not use the exhaust to heat it directly. It would be in a pipe or a hose that would run along the tanks and then exhaust out the side of the trailer. There would be no exhaust gas under the trailer that could seep into the living quarters.

 

[NIsaacs]

I would not use the exhaust to heat it directly. It would be in a pipe or a hose that would run along the tanks and then exhaust out the side of the trailer. There would be no exhaust gas under the trailer that could seep into the living quarters.

I would think that would work, that is how the cab heater works on a old VW bug or Corvair, heat off the exhaust manifolds. It might be more simple to just duct a small portion of the warm forced air heat into the tank area if they are enclosed.

Nick

 

[SnoKing]

You can not restrict the stack on the furnace exhaust or it will not burn correctly. Just install the electric tank heater kits on each tank. SNOKING

 

[MLee]

If you have the Climatech polar package I would think that you don't have to worry about the lines freezing. UNless-- they didn't have this in 05.