Smoked up walls burning eyes for starters

Diesel is a different grade of kerosene and will work. You may need to change the nozzle so it burns clean.

WOOOEEE! Burning eyes! Smelly clothes and garage! Choking smell! Heavy fumes!
I bought some supposedly kerosene from a Sheetz convenience store one time--5 gallons to be exact. Took it home, filled the torpedo heater, started it up and--ZZOWWWIEEE!!! What an awful stink! Never stunk like that before! Checked the stuff i had poured in, turned out to be diesel fuel! My wife ran out of the upstairs above the garage, choking and waving her kitchen knife-hollering at me to get out--don't come back, unless you make that awful smell go away! I finally gave the stuff to a farmer friend for his tractors, and now i buy my kerosene at a different place! And, the Sheetz store wouldn't make it right!

I used to drive a tank truck delivering fuel oil and diesel to homeowners and farmers. No.1 diesel and kerosene are the same thing. No. 2 diesel is definitely a horse of a different color! It would probably wreck your heater as well as drive you out of the house as reported by other posters.

You will destroy the wick in one use with diesel and clog up the vent pin holes. Then you have a 3 hour job cleaning it up and replacing the wick. Cheap grade non K-1 kerosene will also destroy a wick in about 4 uses.

You absolutely MUST use K-1 clear grade kero for convection type kero heaters that use a wick. It does cost more but it beats changing the wick every week.

Watch out for that red kero. Most likely it is NOT K-1 grade and will tar up your heater.

can you mix something with no.1 diesel fuel to make it burn like kerosene in my torpedo heater?

The wick will not be destroyed if you use kerosene or diesel instead of K-1. I have been burning regular kerosene for 3 years now and I haven't had to change the wick once. My heater burns wide open during South Dakota winters too. Think about it... The wick is saturated in the kerosene, diesel, K-1 (refined kerosene), maybe even JP-5 (highly refined kerosene also known as jet fuel if you can afford it) and doesn't have much air (if any) in contact with the wick once its lit. The wick wears down when the wick isn't saturated. As the fuel burns it is replaced by the fuel in the tank at the other end of the wick. My point... keep the wick from drying out and do not run the heater empty to extend the wick's life. If this guy says he burns wicks up when he doesn't burn K-1 then he is doing something wrong. Look up hydrocarbons for the background information to understand why I'm right.

-Wayne
*Dual Major - Chem & Math