car heater

[Red Squirrel]

Anyone use one of these?

http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST...BInterior%2BHeater.jsp

I just came accross this, and I've always wanted to have some kind of in-car electric heater to warm up the car in the morning without burning gas. Electricity is way cheaper then gas. How exactly would one of these plug in? It's 120v. Could I install a receptacle inside the car that hooks up to the block heater cord? I could then get some kind of digital timer that keeps its time even when unplugged to have it start up at 6:00am or something. Would rock to have a warm car right off the bat, without having to let it run for an hour.

And, do they even work? 900w does not seem like all that much heat but guess if it's run for an hour in a small area, is it enough?

 

[NutBucket]

Not 120, that's a 12V heater that plugs into the cig. lighter. It will do something....how much I'm not sure.

Why not get a block heater? Then your engine will reach temperature faster and your head problem will be solved.

EDIT: Reading > me since that's not a 12V heater. Either way, block heater would be better for the engine as well 😉

 

[desy]

I have that exact one 🙂
I won't make your car warm at -20C or lower but it certainly takes the chill out of the air

An hr is kind of minimal for block heater use closer to two hrs before ignition is typically recommended, again -20C or worse.

Just as you suggested I ran an extension cord in the car with receptical inside and either direct wire both the BH and it into a single male receptical or like more cars have the male end moulded into the grill somehow, use a double female receptacle with Male end.
I've done it both ways and on a timer but I did only go an hr on the timer cause it was garaged

 

[Paperdoc]

Interior car warmers like this were all the rage about two decades ago. And yes, this is 120 V AC supplied by extension cord for 900 W (about 7.5 A). (I once had an inventor explain to me the huge advantage of his design concept that worked off the car's 12 V DC battery anywhere! He had not considered how long his battery would last with a 75 Amp load on it.) At that time it was common for people to rig a short extension cord in the front of the car, behind the grille, with three outlets on the end. One for block heater, one for interior warmer. Thus the warmer ran whenever the block heater did.

This was trouble several ways. If you were in the habit of plugging in your block heater overnight, the warmer ran all night, too, consuming a lot of electricity and $$. But a related problem was the impact on parking lots at places of employment with free block heater outlets. A typical engine block heater runs about 400 W. Add in one of these interior warmers and the load of one car jumps hugely to 1300 to 1400 W, about 3/4 of the full capacity of one 15 amp circuit. Plug several cars into the parking lot outlets, and the breaker pops open, leaving ALL the surrounding cars without power. So many parking lot operators put a ban on these things. Some people carefully arranged their extension cords so the three-outlet part was outside the grille, and you could unplug the interior warmer when you were at work.

But the big problem, as anticipated by OP, is how to use a timer control that does NOT lose time and programming when power is off. Ideally you'd like to be able to set up one timer on the cord out to your car to turn on the block heater a couple or three hours before you expect to go out and start it. But you want the interior warmer to wait until only one hour (or less) before use. And you don't really want to have to run separate extension cords out to your car for two applications. Of course, if you are in a garage with two outlets near the car, two timers with one short extension cord each would do the job.

Such arrangements do nothing for warming the car at the end of the work day if you can't do this at work, but it can be used at home.

 

[LTC8K6]

Remote start seems like a much better idea. Especially with auto climate control that turns on the heat and defrosters for you. A little fuel burned seems a small price to pay for not having to deal with the electrical problems.

 

[RU482]

A 900W heater will heat up the cabin of a car fast. Within 10-15 min, even on a freezing day, you'd be able to get the cabin temp up to 70-90F soaked in.