H-45 military tent heater review (2024)

Report this Post12-06-2014 10:03 PM

It seems that eBay sellers found a warehouse full of these surplus diesel fuel powered tent heaters. A friend picked one up to put in his shop and we have played around with it just a bit and for a non-powered heater, it really throws out some BTU's! After getting all the cosmoline burned off, there is no odor from it and it runs for at least a couple of hours on a gallon of fuel. Since he is an amateur cook, he has a lot of old cooking oil that he was saving to use for bio-diesel, but we decided to try it in the heater blended with 50% diesel fuel. With the old fry oil, it burns clean and seems to heat about as well as it does with straight diesel. I used a thermal gun to check the temp of the outside of the heater and with the fry oil, there was about 100 degrees difference (400 degrees vs 500)- still plenty hot enough to heat the shop.
All in all, for about $120, it is a great vented heater that will run on many different fuels (gasoline, jp5, jp8 and diesel), kicks out up to 45,000 BTUs and does it quietly.

Report this Post12-06-2014 10:58 PM

That's the one. It came with an adjustable 'thermostat' with selections for the different fuels, and the hoses for attaching it to a standard 5 gallon 'jerry can'. Super simple and effective design. The surplus market seems to be flooded with them right now, so I wonder if a replacement has been issued and all the old ones are being phased out. If you need a small shop heater, this thing will do it.

Report this Post12-06-2014 11:20 PM

If it has hoses, then it's a relatively newer model than what I have expereince with.
The old ones I am familar with, look a lot like that, but were from the 1940s and Korean War. a 1941 design if I remember correctly. When it ran out of fuel, youlet it cool down and poured some more desel into the bottom of it--had some kind of wick looking thing all around the bottom.
(they still used them at one of the little outlying fields at Cherry Pt Marine Air Base when I was there in the early 70s--some ind of field training facility--I forget it's name)

Report this Post12-07-2014 09:58 AM

I figured they went pretty cheap at the government auctions, but they are heavy (like 80 pounds), so the cost of shipping them is steep. These heaters are just another example of our tax dollars wasted- each one cost around $800 for the government to purchase and they are selling them off by the truckload for only pennies on the dollar
Jim- they are supposed to be vented. When you first light it off and shut it down, it smokes a lot. When it is running, it still puffs some black smoke so there is no way that I would run one in a tightly enclosed area. Even with the stack vented to the outside, it probably still leaks some CO. I would only use it in a garage or shop that has some air leaks, or leave a window cracked just a bit.
I know that diesel is not the cheapest fuel supply, but if you are using a kerosene heater, this might be something to consider. There are no electric components or wick and the 45,000 BTU is a bit higher than many similar priced non-powered kerosene heaters. Since it seems to run well on the mix of waste vegetable oil and diesel, we are going to try it with used motor oil and diesel and see how it does. If it will burn the oil, we have a very large supply of fuel ready to go, so fuel cost would be pretty low. I'll let you know how it goes.