Installing an Espar D2 heater in our Sprinter camper van was something we almost skipped. With 20/20 hindsight and many sub-freezing nights logged on this road trip, it is officially one of our favorite things in the van. (For more background on our full build-out, check out the adventure mobile post or the full post on this Espar installation to check out pictures.)
All in all, our Espar has been absolutely fabulous. We've run it about 50 hours so far without any issues whatsoever. Since I spent a fair number of hours dealing with the install and couldn’t find much except scattered and often incomplete forum posts on the InterWebs, I wrote up the following install process for how I put in our Espar D2 heater. (Installation of the Espar D4 heater is exactly the same so far as I know.) It's long, but I wish someone had written this and saved me some pain so I figured I'd give back to the forum a bit after all the help I've managed to get from here.
First off - I bought our heater from BunkHeaters.com after doing a lot of price checking locally and online. Hands-down, they won. $895 plus $45 for shipping beat other places by a few hundred dollars. Deciding to do the install myself was a simple process after getting quotes of $1,000-$2,000 from the brain surgeons apparently needed to do the work.
I went with an Espar heater because 1) it can run on diesel, which means I could tap into the main fuel tank for our van and avoid installing propane or other fuel sources and 2) everyone else did it and Sprinter Jedi Mind Control works on me. I went with an Espar D2 heater, which is smaller than the D4, after reading that you want the heaters to run on “boost” (high power) in order to avoid fouling the combustion mechanism inside the unit.
Our van is insulated with anywhere from R-11 to R-14 on the walls and ceiling (none in the floor) and so far the heater has kept us warm down to about 22 degrees in the cold and damp redwood forests of the Northern California coast as well as the dry and freezing desert nights in SoCal. For something the size of a Sprinter, I don’t think the D4 is necessary, plus it is a larger unit. Just my two cents as a mechanical engineer who remembers 1/10th of what I learned in heat transfer class.
Fuel economy on these things is amazing. Even at full boost mode, it burns just one gallon of gas in 20 hours (!), and it doesn’t run that high most of the time. For the heat output, it is quite an efficient unit and seems well worth the price. In case you are considering not getting one: If your van is insulated and lacks an internal heat source, it will turn into an ice box. Some people may think body heat will warm up your van. From personal experience and testing this on numerous shorter trips prior to this one, I can say this... They. Are. Wrong. Put in a heater or your less cold-resistant partner is going to stay home while you road trip alone.
Before I talk about the install, here are a few tips and lessons learned:
1. Recruit an unsuspecting friend, or incredibly helpful father-in-law, to help with the heater install.
2. Getting the Sprinter up on blocks or a hoist to get more space under the van will make your life 1.2 million times easier. It can be done without it - I survived - but take my word for it.
3. Something to watch out for: while the wires for the thermostat and heater power are 12’ long, the pump wire is only 7’ long...which can (did) create some issues depending where you place your heater. Why they don’t make the wires the same length, I have no idea.
Strong recommendation: install a combination smoke/CO detector in your van. They're small, cheap and can save your life.
4. You do NOT need the ~2' fuel pickup pipe that comes with the unit if you have an ‘08 or newer Sprinter (the NCV3 or newer). The helpful folks at Mercedes put a fuel tap on the front left side of the fuel tank that makes it quite easy to install the tubing without dropping the fuel tank and drilling a hole in the top. YES.
5. Buy the $36 muffler that BunkHeaters.com has. Our heater sounded like a rocket headed to Mars before I installed it two months into our trip. Your neighbors in camp will appreciate it, trust me. It’s a super easy install.
6. If you are going to be camping at high altitudes such as the Rockies a lot, consider installing the kit that allows you to do it without fouling the Espar. I didn’t do it, but it is worth considering.
7. Some guy on this forum cut off the “extra” wiring harness on the unit after he installed the thermostat and fuel pump wiring. That’s the diagnostic port! Leave it there.
8. The fuel pump wiring will not go through the same routing hole as the intake/combustion beneath the unit. You have to run it through the floor of the van somewhere else.
All that said, the Espar D2 has the following connections that you’ll need to hook up:
1. Intake air for combustion from outside the vehicle - black flexible hose provided with the unit.
2. Exhaust air from combustion to the outside of the vehicle - silver, heat-resistant ribbed metal hose provided with the unit.
3. Fuel line from the main diesel tank under the van, routed through the fuel pump that comes with the heater (more below on that specific item).
4. Thermostat control wiring - this stays internal to the van. Just follow the color-coded instructions on the wiring, it’s straight-forward.
5. Power wiring - I ran this directly into a fuse in our 12v panel.
6. Intake/Heating air ducts - I installed our heater so that the heating air snout for the heating unit pokes into the main living space, with the intake end of the unit in the bike garage. This has worked well and air circulates through the van without running a large amount of duct work, which I wanted to avoid.
Here is how I went about installing the heater in our 2013 Sprinter (same as 2008-2013). Please note this is the same process as 2007 and earlier models except that you’ll need to drop the fuel tank and install the fuel pickup that the Espar D2 or D4 heaters come with. Check out other posts on this forum for information on that.
Install process:
1. Figure out where your heater is going to go and measure all wires, duct work, and fuel lines to make sure you have enough material. Then add 10-20% slop so you avoid stretching wires tight or running out of fuel line halfway. I ended up having to relocate the fuel pump and the shorter wire presented a headache.
2. To attach the stock Mercedes Sprinter fuel tank to the Espar fuel line, read all the directions in the installation manual and then (perhaps) follow what I did:
a) Buy a short (<12”) piece of 5/16” black flexible fuel line, two clamps to fit it and a metal male-male connector that is ¼”.
b) The 5/16” fuel line slips over the fuel tap from the Mercedes tank. Then you insert the ¼” connector into that, which then inserts into the ~3/16” (5mm) fuel line that comes with the Espar D2. Make sure to clamp all connections.
c) Clamped down, the fuel lines are snug around the connector and you can run the 5/16” fuel line directly to the fuel pump for the Espar heater. The instructions clearly give you max distances and orientation for everything.
3. The fun (scary!) part: cut a 4x6” rectangle in your wood floor. Note: you can cut all the way through the metal, but I don’t recommend it. Instead, just cut through the floor (a hole saw worked great for me) to get the clearance from the exhaust pipe and then drill smaller holes that allow the intake/combustion pipes to exit. There is a template provided with the heater that makes this easy. File down sharp edges on the holes and install heat-resistant muffler putty on the wood. I also folded up some aluminum foil and lined the inside of the wood just to reflect some heat back. Probably overkill, but it was easy.
4. The seal that comes with the heater will mash down on top of the floor and seal out grime and dirt. I don't think it is necessary to cut a huge gaping hole in the metal when it just takes a couple holes.
5. You’ve got your holes drilled. Before routing the intake/exhaust pipes, clamp them to the unit. Otherwise you’ll be doing it on your back and it will be impossible. A little foresight here saved me some serious pain.
6. Fuel line and intake/exhaust ducting run? Route any internal ducting, or at least think about where it is going to go. Perhaps reference step #1 again.
7. Run your thermostat, power and fuel control wiring. See how easy that was? Just one sentence that will take you a couple hours. Enjoy!
8. FIRE UP THE BEAST. At first, all you’ll hear is a clicking of the fuel pump as it fills up the fuel line for the Espar. Do not despair if the unit “malfunctions” and says there isn’t enough fuel to start combustion. Reset it and do it again. It took three times through for ours to start. In the meantime, I cursed, kicked some stuff, and practiced other Zen methods of stress control. The manual doesn’t tell you to just let it run. I hopefully just saved you some frustration and early gray hairs.
That’s it! The details are in the the instruction manual and will cover most of it, yet I think a few little pointers like this could have saved me a considerable amount of time. Drop me a line if you have any questions about your install.
Cheers to staying warm on the road,
Dakota
All in all, our Espar has been absolutely fabulous. We've run it about 50 hours so far without any issues whatsoever. Since I spent a fair number of hours dealing with the install and couldn’t find much except scattered and often incomplete forum posts on the InterWebs, I wrote up the following install process for how I put in our Espar D2 heater. (Installation of the Espar D4 heater is exactly the same so far as I know.) It's long, but I wish someone had written this and saved me some pain so I figured I'd give back to the forum a bit after all the help I've managed to get from here.
First off - I bought our heater from BunkHeaters.com after doing a lot of price checking locally and online. Hands-down, they won. $895 plus $45 for shipping beat other places by a few hundred dollars. Deciding to do the install myself was a simple process after getting quotes of $1,000-$2,000 from the brain surgeons apparently needed to do the work.
I went with an Espar heater because 1) it can run on diesel, which means I could tap into the main fuel tank for our van and avoid installing propane or other fuel sources and 2) everyone else did it and Sprinter Jedi Mind Control works on me. I went with an Espar D2 heater, which is smaller than the D4, after reading that you want the heaters to run on “boost” (high power) in order to avoid fouling the combustion mechanism inside the unit.
Our van is insulated with anywhere from R-11 to R-14 on the walls and ceiling (none in the floor) and so far the heater has kept us warm down to about 22 degrees in the cold and damp redwood forests of the Northern California coast as well as the dry and freezing desert nights in SoCal. For something the size of a Sprinter, I don’t think the D4 is necessary, plus it is a larger unit. Just my two cents as a mechanical engineer who remembers 1/10th of what I learned in heat transfer class.
Fuel economy on these things is amazing. Even at full boost mode, it burns just one gallon of gas in 20 hours (!), and it doesn’t run that high most of the time. For the heat output, it is quite an efficient unit and seems well worth the price. In case you are considering not getting one: If your van is insulated and lacks an internal heat source, it will turn into an ice box. Some people may think body heat will warm up your van. From personal experience and testing this on numerous shorter trips prior to this one, I can say this... They. Are. Wrong. Put in a heater or your less cold-resistant partner is going to stay home while you road trip alone.
Before I talk about the install, here are a few tips and lessons learned:
1. Recruit an unsuspecting friend, or incredibly helpful father-in-law, to help with the heater install.
2. Getting the Sprinter up on blocks or a hoist to get more space under the van will make your life 1.2 million times easier. It can be done without it - I survived - but take my word for it.
3. Something to watch out for: while the wires for the thermostat and heater power are 12’ long, the pump wire is only 7’ long...which can (did) create some issues depending where you place your heater. Why they don’t make the wires the same length, I have no idea.
Strong recommendation: install a combination smoke/CO detector in your van. They're small, cheap and can save your life.
4. You do NOT need the ~2' fuel pickup pipe that comes with the unit if you have an ‘08 or newer Sprinter (the NCV3 or newer). The helpful folks at Mercedes put a fuel tap on the front left side of the fuel tank that makes it quite easy to install the tubing without dropping the fuel tank and drilling a hole in the top. YES.
5. Buy the $36 muffler that BunkHeaters.com has. Our heater sounded like a rocket headed to Mars before I installed it two months into our trip. Your neighbors in camp will appreciate it, trust me. It’s a super easy install.
6. If you are going to be camping at high altitudes such as the Rockies a lot, consider installing the kit that allows you to do it without fouling the Espar. I didn’t do it, but it is worth considering.
7. Some guy on this forum cut off the “extra” wiring harness on the unit after he installed the thermostat and fuel pump wiring. That’s the diagnostic port! Leave it there.
8. The fuel pump wiring will not go through the same routing hole as the intake/combustion beneath the unit. You have to run it through the floor of the van somewhere else.
All that said, the Espar D2 has the following connections that you’ll need to hook up:
1. Intake air for combustion from outside the vehicle - black flexible hose provided with the unit.
2. Exhaust air from combustion to the outside of the vehicle - silver, heat-resistant ribbed metal hose provided with the unit.
3. Fuel line from the main diesel tank under the van, routed through the fuel pump that comes with the heater (more below on that specific item).
4. Thermostat control wiring - this stays internal to the van. Just follow the color-coded instructions on the wiring, it’s straight-forward.
5. Power wiring - I ran this directly into a fuse in our 12v panel.
6. Intake/Heating air ducts - I installed our heater so that the heating air snout for the heating unit pokes into the main living space, with the intake end of the unit in the bike garage. This has worked well and air circulates through the van without running a large amount of duct work, which I wanted to avoid.
Here is how I went about installing the heater in our 2013 Sprinter (same as 2008-2013). Please note this is the same process as 2007 and earlier models except that you’ll need to drop the fuel tank and install the fuel pickup that the Espar D2 or D4 heaters come with. Check out other posts on this forum for information on that.
Install process:
1. Figure out where your heater is going to go and measure all wires, duct work, and fuel lines to make sure you have enough material. Then add 10-20% slop so you avoid stretching wires tight or running out of fuel line halfway. I ended up having to relocate the fuel pump and the shorter wire presented a headache.
2. To attach the stock Mercedes Sprinter fuel tank to the Espar fuel line, read all the directions in the installation manual and then (perhaps) follow what I did:
a) Buy a short (<12”) piece of 5/16” black flexible fuel line, two clamps to fit it and a metal male-male connector that is ¼”.
b) The 5/16” fuel line slips over the fuel tap from the Mercedes tank. Then you insert the ¼” connector into that, which then inserts into the ~3/16” (5mm) fuel line that comes with the Espar D2. Make sure to clamp all connections.
c) Clamped down, the fuel lines are snug around the connector and you can run the 5/16” fuel line directly to the fuel pump for the Espar heater. The instructions clearly give you max distances and orientation for everything.
3. The fun (scary!) part: cut a 4x6” rectangle in your wood floor. Note: you can cut all the way through the metal, but I don’t recommend it. Instead, just cut through the floor (a hole saw worked great for me) to get the clearance from the exhaust pipe and then drill smaller holes that allow the intake/combustion pipes to exit. There is a template provided with the heater that makes this easy. File down sharp edges on the holes and install heat-resistant muffler putty on the wood. I also folded up some aluminum foil and lined the inside of the wood just to reflect some heat back. Probably overkill, but it was easy.
4. The seal that comes with the heater will mash down on top of the floor and seal out grime and dirt. I don't think it is necessary to cut a huge gaping hole in the metal when it just takes a couple holes.
5. You’ve got your holes drilled. Before routing the intake/exhaust pipes, clamp them to the unit. Otherwise you’ll be doing it on your back and it will be impossible. A little foresight here saved me some serious pain.
6. Fuel line and intake/exhaust ducting run? Route any internal ducting, or at least think about where it is going to go. Perhaps reference step #1 again.
7. Run your thermostat, power and fuel control wiring. See how easy that was? Just one sentence that will take you a couple hours. Enjoy!
8. FIRE UP THE BEAST. At first, all you’ll hear is a clicking of the fuel pump as it fills up the fuel line for the Espar. Do not despair if the unit “malfunctions” and says there isn’t enough fuel to start combustion. Reset it and do it again. It took three times through for ours to start. In the meantime, I cursed, kicked some stuff, and practiced other Zen methods of stress control. The manual doesn’t tell you to just let it run. I hopefully just saved you some frustration and early gray hairs.
That’s it! The details are in the the instruction manual and will cover most of it, yet I think a few little pointers like this could have saved me a considerable amount of time. Drop me a line if you have any questions about your install.
Cheers to staying warm on the road,
Dakota
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