i've just picked up an almost new clarke little devil gas fired space heater from machine mart.... it was returned with a fault, been fixed, got all the safety test certs etc, and i got it for 40 quid less than new,
Anyway, got it home, faffed about connecting it up to my gas supply, which is the fixed gas tank from my last motorhome, i need to have a different filler valve fitted to the tank before i fit it to my next motorhome i'm building, so that's one of the reasons i bought the little devil heater.. to use the gas in the tank up.
The heater works fine, lights first spark, fan is quiet etc, flame has a light yellow tip to it (about hte last 1/2 an inch of flame), i cant adjust that out by adjusting the regulator pressure, so that must be normal??
Anyway, i'm wondering how big the flame ring should be on these heaters, there's the thermocouple that stickes straight out near the edge of the gas jet holder plate (looking into the heaters mouth and you'll see what i mean.. there's the thin bent ignitor electrode near the jet, and a thicher straight electrode that's for the gas shut off safety devise.
on my heater the end of the flames don't come near that thermocouple.. it's about about an inch away from it, the thermocouple works fine, so is picking up the residual heat to operate it, but i'm wondering if my flame is not big enough,
the heater just dosent seem to chuck out as much heat as i hoped it would, standing 2 foot away from it and it's toasty, but stand 6 foot away and you get a cool blast of air rather than warm of hot air,
I've got autogas in my gas tank, which is a butane/propane mix, so it could be possible i've got mainly butane left in there (propane gets drawn off first at low temperatures, leaving the butane behind, which dosent vaporise below 5 degrees C) and i have got a low flame because of that,
the fan creates a spiral air wave i can see, that curls the flames around, but every now and then the air spiral gets disripted and pulls one of the flames away from the gas outlet hole.. (called a flame stand off) this makes the heater quite noisey, like a gas cooker ring being blown by the wind.. only louder,
is this normal, or could it be because i have low gas pressure... possibly, i know the easiest test would be to fill the tank with pure propane, but that defeats the object of buying hte heater right now.. which is to empty the tank so i can have a valve changed,
Can anyone who has one of these heaters tell me if theirs runs any differently to how i've described mine.
Cheers