Diesel air heater Planar Autoterm 44D DELUXE 12V 4KW AUTOCARAVANA CAMPER DIGITAL CONTROL

Robust 4kW diesel air heater for 12V with new OLED display and includes complete kit, additional tank and exhaust silencer, ideal for large quantities, vans, trucks and boats.

The Planar 44D is a 4 kW diesel air heater from Planar (Advers). It is a reasonably priced alternative to similar models bei espar or Webasto, namely the Airtronic D4. The kit contains everything you need for installation, including a control unit and even a small fuel tank. 

The digital control unit allows precise control of the temperature or power level. There is also a cable for external or remote switches of your own manufacture. You can also attach an additional temperature sending to place it in the living room or sleeping area.

This heater is equipped with an automatic high altitude kit. That means that the heater will automatically adjust fuel injection amounts to lower oxygen levels as air pressure decreases with altitude. Therefore, soot in the combustion chamber can be drastically minimised. Note: Of course, the maximum achievable power output is reduced proportionally to the amount of oxygen in the air. The algorithm used is a little more sophisticated, but in general terms, approximately 5% of the power is lost for every 500 metres above 2000 m.

This heater has been tested by the manufacturer up to 2500mtrs. The software itself calculates the injection quantities even at 5000 m altitude, but this configuration has only been tested at lower altitudes. So, while in theory a consistent burn should be achievable, we have no real world feedback on this. Yet.

Important: running a heater at high altitudes requires very good fans. This means that, ideally, there should be no hot air ducts connected to the heater, as the combustion and exhaust chamber inlet should be as short as possible. The lower the resistance in all these ducts, the more freely the fan can rotate, the more air can be blown into the combustion chamber. Please keep this in mind!

In any case, please note: high altitudes will always encounter a technical compromise of some kind. For longer periods of time (e.g. weeks versus days), care must be taken to bring the combustion chamber up to temperature. If that is not possible, soot in the burn chamber will be produced slowly anyway, just as with heaters that are used only at the lowest power setting, even at zero altitude. So, whatever you do, as has been the case so far: there is no guarantee for patched combustion chambers. There never was and never will be, not even with the high altitude kit.

Therefore, let the heater burn out regularly at the highest power setting, preferably at low altitudes. In general, for all use cases, that means at least every 1-2 weeks for half an hour at full power, to get rid of any carbon build-up that may have occurred. That is all you have to do in terms of servicing a diesel heater.

For those very rare special cases with weeks spent at altitudes of over 4000 metres, we assume that a combustion chamber cleaning should be feasible when problems start.

All Planar glow plugs have the (e2) certified mark, which allows their installation in all vehicles within the European Union without consulting the TÜV or MOT offices (or whatever they are called in your country ...;)) Please note: The mounting holes etc. are identical to Espar, so that you can simply replace one of those without having to modify anything. 

Technical data:

Operating voltage: 12V

Heat output: 1kW (min), 4kW (max)

Fuel efficiency: 0.12ltr / hr (min), 0.514ltr / hr (max)

Power rating: 10W (min), 62W (max)

Airflow: 70m³ / h (min), 120m³ / h (max)