Electronics : Winter Heating

Spend £300 and buy a Kenlowe electic coolant heater.

If anyone knows of cheaper solutions please let me know as well - if I find any I'll post them here.

Start the car 10 mins before you go and let it warm up?

Or if you think its gonna get nicked, you need one of those remote engine starters on your alarm, that keeps the doors locked till you tell it to open them.

Really that much?? It'd probably cheaper to run the engine for 10 mins :-)

I suppose I was thinking more low tech than this, almost to the level of putting a fan heater on the back seat with a trailing plug!

For 600 quid I'd rather clean the garage out and park in there, ha!

Don't use a fan heater, they're good at setting things on fire, oil filled radiators are fine though.

...

Yup, done it. In the way you suggest, trailing mains cable and fan heater in car. Heater has a thermostat, so can't go too wrong. Just make sure you position it so the fan doesn't get blocked, the extension lead you're using is rated appropriately, and any electical connections are inside the car (ie the heater plug/extension socket) and you'll be fine. The last one of these is probably a bit of paranoia. (oh - possibly don't point the fan at the windscreen)

Works _very_ well - warm inside, windows all nice and clear. I think I just shut the door on the cable - there's enough of a gap on my car.

Engine shouldn't mind being cold, so little point in using a heater to warm it in our climate.

cheers, clive

In news: snipped-for-privacy@uni-berlin.de, DanTXD decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

You want a Mercedes, you do. Heater on mine goes from sub zero to toastie in about a mile. Which is nice.

Yep. Same here.

Cheap Argos fan heater on the back seat pointed at the gap between the front seats. 15 minutes of 3KW is enough the both defrost and demist all the glass on the coldest day, and the interior stays fairly warm until the car's heater gets going. The only problem was having to have the door of the house ajar to plug in the extension lead.

Cheers,

Colin.

As if it does the thermostat won't stop it burning your seats.

This may be a bit extreme compared to what you are after, but one of me mates has a 4 car garage, fully double glazed and centrally heated, automatic doors, the lot, with access directly from the house. He's always getting slagged for it, but I wouldn't say No. ; )

Stuart Gray (me@home) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

I seriously considered renting an ex-firestation a few years back - two bed flat, with built in eight car garage.

No, but the thermal cutout generally will. Obviously best not rely on that though. Normal fan-heater rules apply and all that.

I've never tried an oil-filled radiator in the car, but to get a reasonably quick defrost it'd have to be a big-un. Positioning it so it isn't partially covered is surely going to be nigh-on impossible?

Cheers,

Colin.

Now that's the sort of house I could do with!!

Just little old me, so I don't need lots of bedrooms n stuff, but have got lots of junk like landrovers, transits etc lying around, so need a big garage!

Anyone know of a 1 bedroom bed-sit with a 4 car garage for rent anywhere?

:)

Doesn't matter though, they don't get hot enough to damage anything .

LOL - now that would definately have "direct" access from the house to the garage. Great for those waking up late mornings. : )

Only if they have good free airflow. Start restricting that and the surface temperature heads skywards. They're not like water-fed central heating radiators. They have a fixed amount of power they need to get rid of.

Cheers,

Colin.

The message from "Stuart Gray" contains these words:

If you had a convertible you could even have a dangling pole right over the driver's seat and drop straight in.

Did Saab not have some fandango heating system a while back that stored heat from the exhaust or someat for re-heating the car in the morning?

Adam

Guy King ( snipped-for-privacy@zetnet.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

At the time, I had a Mehari -

If I got it right, I could be moving before I properly landed in the seat...

Didn't see quite so many giraffes in Slough, though.

Not sure about that, but they do a petrol powered heater for the current models. Most of the cars I saw in Sweden had electric heaters though, with power points at the ends of all the spaces in most company car parks.

Cheers,

Colin.