megloff11x
Senior Member
background:
In northern climes many of us use engine block heaters, though some newer cars won't accept them. Basically you knock out a freeze plug on the engine block and install this 400-700W heater in its place. It has a 120VAC power cord. You run an extension cord from whatever outlet you can find to this cord.
It makes it MUCH easier to start if it's 12 below (like this morning) or a couple years back when it was 51 below ambient (no wind).
You really only need to plug it in for 2-3 hours to warm it adequately. However, most plug in before bed and thus it sucks 0.5kWh or so every hour for an un-needed 5-6 hours.
Most plug-in timer circuits are for indoor use and many probably aren't up to switching a middlin heater load on a daily basis for very long, listed &rated or not.
This would never pay for itself in a reasonable time on energy savings unless the policitians get their energy "fixes" in, but some folks like to be as green as they can these days.
Is there an affordable hardwired, listed, acceptable timer & disconnect switch that can be installed inside to control outlets outside? There are dozens of ways and hardware choices to do this, few really cheap, but maybe someone has a product?
Set the thing to turn on the block heater ~2-3 hours before you have to leave for work.
An added bonus is manually de-energizing outside outlets. I had a co-worker go home for lunch one day. There was a crew working on her neighbor's house and they had plugged their stereo and drill battery charger into her outside outlets and were using her spigot for their watering hose!
I put this up as food for thought for possible new business in the slower winter months. At probably 50 cents a night of electricity savings it might take a decade to recover the investment of installation. But again, some folks like to try saving every microwatt-hour of energy they can, even if it's off peak.
Matt
In northern climes many of us use engine block heaters, though some newer cars won't accept them. Basically you knock out a freeze plug on the engine block and install this 400-700W heater in its place. It has a 120VAC power cord. You run an extension cord from whatever outlet you can find to this cord.
It makes it MUCH easier to start if it's 12 below (like this morning) or a couple years back when it was 51 below ambient (no wind).
You really only need to plug it in for 2-3 hours to warm it adequately. However, most plug in before bed and thus it sucks 0.5kWh or so every hour for an un-needed 5-6 hours.
Most plug-in timer circuits are for indoor use and many probably aren't up to switching a middlin heater load on a daily basis for very long, listed &rated or not.
This would never pay for itself in a reasonable time on energy savings unless the policitians get their energy "fixes" in, but some folks like to be as green as they can these days.
Is there an affordable hardwired, listed, acceptable timer & disconnect switch that can be installed inside to control outlets outside? There are dozens of ways and hardware choices to do this, few really cheap, but maybe someone has a product?
Set the thing to turn on the block heater ~2-3 hours before you have to leave for work.
An added bonus is manually de-energizing outside outlets. I had a co-worker go home for lunch one day. There was a crew working on her neighbor's house and they had plugged their stereo and drill battery charger into her outside outlets and were using her spigot for their watering hose!
I put this up as food for thought for possible new business in the slower winter months. At probably 50 cents a night of electricity savings it might take a decade to recover the investment of installation. But again, some folks like to try saving every microwatt-hour of energy they can, even if it's off peak.
Matt
