My frostheater findings regarding length of time.

[nate379]

$30/month is about 1/2 my normal electric bill, so ok, maybe it's just a "cup of coffee" a day, but a "cup" here and there and all a sudden you are spending $500-600 a month on utilities.

With the electric rates here with it plugged in 12hrs a day for a month it would be about $50.


That being said, I don't have a block heater on the car yet and with the -15* temps we had, the car wouldn't start from being parked ~12hrs. Not sure if the battery is going bad or what but my truck is diesel as well and it started fine.

Since the heaters have an internal thermostat and shut off once a specific temp. has been reached; I leave mine on all the time. Also for the fact that I'm never 100% sure when I'm leaving the house again. I may have to go out for milk at some arbitrary time.

1kW/hr here is 7¢. I'm going to break down my approximate costs.

8.5hrs @ work, no cost
1hr of total on road driving, no cost
1hr of total in parking lots, no cost
13.5hrs remaining at home, parked @ 7¢/hr
--------------------------------------------
Total Frost Heater Cost = 95¢ a day.

So this comes out to less than a cup of coffee and less than a litre of diesel fuel(by a long shot these days). So for me it's well worth the cost of running the heater @ 95¢ a day.

 

[NB_TDi]

Oooh, that hurts. That really hurts. Especially since we produce it here in the first place.

Say what?

As of right now our Nuclear panner plant is offline for a rebuild. But normally we sell our surplus electricity to you yanks.

At a much inflated cost.

As for having a $60 a month electric bill. That's some impressive. We're about $200 a month. Of course everything is electric here.

 

[DrewD]

I had a1500 watt zerostart heater installled in my last TDI (an 06) and on hours of use gave me instant heat that stayed hot as I drove off. I'm sure the current owne of this vehicle is still using the heater.

 

[Birdman]

I can't use my heater, but this might help you.

I have the vinyl front cover as well, but I blocked off the front end 100% with pipe insulation (both lower grilles and intercooler grille). You can get a more stylish non-turbo grille to replace the one for the intercooler in the winter. I just go with the industrial look because aesthetics are unimportant to me.

From about 15F the other day, it took about 7 minutes to reach 50C at town speed (35 MPH), with few stops. Most of the time the IAT was 2-15C. Within 15 minutes the temperature was up to 80C and eventually crept up to 87C. Useful defrosting power took about 5 minutes.

When you preheat, leave the heater control set to cold. Otherwise, you lose a lot of energy from heating the windshield. If you store it instead, the engine will start off hotter, and you can dump more energy onto the window in a short time, allowing you to defrost it anyway. Once defrosted, keep the heat on the minimum setting required to prevent fogging until the motor heats up. Otherwise, it will take forever to warm up.

I have found it a bit easier (and looks better) to remove the center bottom grill then slide black card board up between the trim and the Air Cond. Coils. You can cover as much of the radiator as you want this way and it only takes a few minutes to do.

 

[Birdman]

Check your bill as we pay 7 cents per KWH up until you reach 600KWH. After you reach that point it goes to 14 Per KWH.

I believe that this is how they try to get you to use less.

With fuel sur charges and local taxes we are up to .0985 cents per KWH no matter how much we use. If I am careful I can get by on 450 KWH using oil for heat which is another 800$ a season. I would love .075 as I would never go over. Hopefully by next season I will have a Heat Pump put in and get away from the Higher cost of Oil. But Electric is not getting any cheaper.

 

[sisyphus]

Say what?

As of right now our Nuclear panner plant is offline for a rebuild. But normally we sell our surplus electricity to you yanks.

At a much inflated cost.

As for having a $60 a month electric bill. That's some impressive. We're about $200 a month. Of course everything is electric here.

Maine produces more electricity than it can use. All if it then is sold to the electricity co-op, which then takes what it needs for southern new england and then sells the rest to us an an inflated price, through a private company. Nice, eh? I wasn't aware that Maine in particular bought electricity from Canadian sources, although I do know that we get almost all of our propane from up north.