Any ideas how to heat a cargo van?
I recently bought a 2006 GMC Savana cargo van to use as a work van and the only heater it has is the one under the dash in the front cab area. The cargo area has no heat and without a partition between the cab area and cargo area the heater under the dash doesn’t do much to heat the van. It already has a walk through heavy-gauge steel mesh cargo safety barrier behind the seats and I would really rather not have to replace the steel mesh barrier with a full solid partition. So does anyone have any ideas on how I can heat the cargo area?
4 Responses
fire4511
18 Feb 2010
lar
18 Feb 2010
go the junk yard, retrieve a heater coil and motor from a junked vehicle and run hoses underneath the van to the place where you want to mount the heater. Run wires to the front to establish an on and off switch. go for it.
Ralfcoder
18 Feb 2010
If you want to heat only the passenger area, and don’t need to heat the cargo area, drape a blanket, towels, etc over the safety barrier to restrict air flow to the back. That way the heater has to heat only about 20% of the entire vehicle, instead of all of it. You may need to leave some of it open so you can see out the rear view mirror, but even so, that will still restrict a lot of the air flow to the rear end.
Kenny D
18 Feb 2010
The Stewart Warner South Wind Corp manufactures 30,000 BTU to 60,000 BTU multi-fuel (gasoline or diesel) combustion type auxiliary heaters and they are very easy to install but are quite expensive. And they are very safe because a forced air heat exchanger heats the interior and the combustion is exhausted to the outside. Here is a link to their website:
http://www.stewart-warner.com/index.html
It is possible though to find one at a bargain price. They have been making them for the military for more than 60 years and every now and then you can find a bargain buy on one at military surplus outlets and on eBay.
Here is a 30,000 BTU unit on eBay (although it does not appear to include the necessary installation hardware):
http://cgi.ebay.com/STEWART-WARNER-SOUTHWIND-ARMY-TRUCK-HEATER-UNIT_W0QQitemZ130351048441QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item1e598726f9
Here is a 60,000 BTU unit at a surplus website (this unit has all of the necessary installation hardware although it is temporarily out of stock):
http://www.eriksmilitarysurplus.com/vemuhestwaoj.html
But I suggest you give some serious consideration to installing a full partition and forget about heating the cargo area because you are going to have the same sort of problem during the summer months when you try to cool the cab area without a sealed partition.
The reason that cargo vans are so hard to heat is that there is very little in the way of insulation in the cargo compartment. There are just the metal walls, with no interior trim on most of them. The metal is a good conductor of heat, meaning that it allows the heat to escape from the van in the winter.
If your concern is trying to provide heat in the front, for the driver and passenger, then there is a simple solution. You want to block off the front from the cargo area. You already have a mesh barrier, so it will be easy to do.
Get some moving pads, or old blankets hang them on the steel mesh barrier, creating a solid barrier to keep the warm air in the front of the van. This will reduce the area that the dash heater must heat, and will keep you warm.
If you want to heat the cargo area, the best thing to do is to insulate the walls and doors and cover the insulation with either wood or plastic panels. After that is done, you could add an auxiliary heater.