Solar Heating and Cooling

I have to come “clean” with my “green friends” that I “cannot afford” to do renewable solar heating or cooling.

We are going to heat the thing with a Webasto Dual top evo or similar, I believe. This kinda sucks. It would be sweet if we could heat it at night with energy that we caught during the day with the solar panels. But, the math on that doesn’t work out too great. Perhaps it does if you can figure out a way to get a mini-split heat pump going, but you might still need a backup heater in the case that you bonk the batteries and don’t want your pipes to freeze. I really hope to get this rectified on my next build and to get solar-powered heat in there somehow. I’m thinking this will be possible when we’re able to get a Leaf or Volt or similar battery into a van at a reasonable price point. This would have been a really fun project to tackle, but I also had a about an 8–12 week window to get a minimum viable system together such that we can be able to jump into this thing and at least go for a trip with a backbone of an electrical system and some insulation, so we’re not completely miserable.

The pros of diesel heat are just too compelling:

• Comes with a thermostat
• Runs off of the existing fuel source
• The tank already has an auxiliary fuel takeoff
• They combined air / water heaters

This will make protecting the (eventually they will exist) pipes from freezing “easy”.