Keeping a garden log cabin warm during the winter months can be expensive. I’ve tried various electric and gas heaters to heat my log cabin, but I found that they all cost a small fortune to run.
After seeing a YouTube video of a guy using a diesel heater to heat his camper van, I thought I’d try heating my log cabin with one.
Can You Heat A Log Cabin With A Diesel Heater
With a little bit of thought and planning, diesel heaters can be a great and cheap way to heat a log cabin. They are considerably cheaper than the electric heaters that are often used to heat garden log cabins. Also, a diesel heater pumps out a lot of heat, warming up a log cabin very quickly.
What Type Of Diesel Heater For A Log Cabin
For most log cabins the best diesel heater is one that is often referred to as a ‘Cheap Chinese Diesel Heater‘. These heaters are fairly small, usually measuring around 50cm tall, 50cm deep, 20cm wide, and weighing about 10 Kilograms.
Diesel heaters are either All In One self-contained units with the heater and the fuel tank or they can not be All In One and have the heater and fuel tank separate. The All In One diesel heaters are easier to set up, but having a separate heater and fuel tank may be a better option, depending on where the heater is being installed.
Do Diesel Heaters Require Power
Yes, diesel heaters require electricity to power the fuel pump, fan, and ignition. Fortunately, they use only a small amount of electricity because the expensive bit of creating heat is done using diesel.
Most diesel heaters are designed for camper vans and boats and use a car cigarette lighter for power. Unsurprisingly, my log cabin doesn’t have a car lighter socket, so I purchased a mains adapter with the car cigarette socket.
Some diesel heaters don’t come with the car cigarette lighter plug, they just come with wires. You will need to buy a plug from Amazon, like the one below.
How Much Is A Diesel Heater
A half-decent small diesel heater can be bought for about £100. This makes them more expensive than most electric heaters, but the running costs are considerably less.
Be aware that many diesel heaters claim to have a higher heat output than they are actually capable of producing. For example, if you see a diesel heater claiming to be 8 kilowatts (KW), the chances are that it is probably more like 5 kilowatts or even less.
How Much Does It Cost To Run A Diesel Heater
It depends on how much heat the diesel heater is generating and how long it is running.
As a rough guide, my ‘8KW’ diesel heater uses 1.5 litres of diesel every 8 hours when the heater is on setting ‘2Hz’. At ‘2Hz’, the diesel heater will keep my insulated log cabin (5m x 4.5m x 2.5m) warm on a cold day
Diesel in the UK currently costs about £1.50 per litre at the filling station. This means it costs me about £2.25 per day to heat my log cabin for 8 hours with a diesel heater.
Achieving the same results with an electric fan and convection heater was costing me between £6 and £9.
UPDATE: I have been reliably told that anyone can use red diesel to fuel a domestic diesel heater. Red diesel has less tax and can currently (March 2024) be purchased for £0.80 per litre. That’s nearly half the price of normal diesel!
Are Diesel Heaters Safe To Use In A Log Cabin
From the reviews I’ve seen online and YouTube videos about diesel heaters, they appear to be pretty safe.
However, with the nickname ‘Cheap Chinese Diesel Heaters’ it should raise a few concerns and I would definitely recommend that you take some safety precautions.
Below are simple safety precautions you can take to improve safety significantly.
- Get a carbon monoxide alarm
- Keep the diesel heater in a well-ventilated area
- Do not leave the heater running unattended
- Keep the heater away from flammable materials. The exhaust pipe gets very hot
Conclusion: Diesel Heater For A Log Cabin
It takes a fair bit of faffing about to get a diesel heater working in a log cabin. There’s also the initial outlay for the heater. But for me, it has been a game changer in keeping my cabin warm during the winter months.
The diesel heater is considerably cheaper to run than the electric heaters I previously used, and it is much quicker at initially heating up the cabin.
