In addition to adding new seats up front that swivel so that we can turn them around when stopped to make a cozy living/dining area, we also installed a heater in the base of the passenger seat at the same time. One thing about building out this van---there is an order of operations to doing things, and so this was one of those project items where we were working on multiple things at once.
We intend to use this van all year round, and with that means there will be some cold days (and nights) ahead of us! While the van will keep us warm while driving with the heat on, we wanted to have an alternative heat source for when we are parked somewhere cold and hanging out (think ski resort parking lot or a winter camping spot) to be able to hang out comfortably inside the van. So, we added a Webasto Air Top 2000 Heater under the front passenger seat. This heater is tied into the van's gas tank, so it runs off of the same fuel as the van.
This project required Ryan to have to 1) siphon out the gas out of the gas tank, 2) crawl under then van and loosen the brackets to drop the gas tank, 3) remove the fuel tank sender apparatus so he could add a line tap into the gas tank to pull fuel into the heater, and 4) put it all back together! The heater also has a level sensor, so if we are out in the boonies running the heater and our gas tank starts to get low (about 1/4 tank), it has an automatic shut-off valve to turn off the heater. We don't want to run out of gas in the middle of nowhere!
This was a pretty in-depth project, but as usual, Ryan never ceases to amaze me at what is able to do with this build! If you would like to see all the work that went into making this installation happen, watch our YouTube video below!
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