Personal ceramic heater in the car?

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I am curious if anybody tried power inverters in the car and have used personal ceramic heaters for first 5-10 minutes of driving on cold mornings.

I get chilblains every winter and no matter what I have tried, not a thing has worked. This year, they are particularly awful. (I do not have Lupus or Reynaud's.) Hence first 10 minutes of driving is royally painful in our forester. It takes at least 10-15 minutes of city road driving for it to get warm. I am seriously considering an option of getting an inverter like BESTEK 300W with a personal ceramic heater like Lasko #100 for next year.

Did anyone try this idea? Does it work? Forester's factory fitted battery is not the greatest one but I will be installing fleet-type AGM battery once this is out.

If you have any better solution, would love to hear.

Thanks in advance.
 
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If you have access to 110v plug, you could install a water heater in the cooling system, and then start up the car a couple minutes before leaving, and it would be nice and warm.
 
If you don't like a remote starter, a block heater would help alot. 300W isn't going to help much if it worked and I suspect either the inverter or cigarette lighter fuse/wiring isn't going to like being run on full load like that.
On my old beater Neon I'd just drag the brakes fairly hard while using half throttle and that warmed things up pretty fast too.
 
I used one when my car sat outside. I got a heavy duty timer and ran an extension cord to the car, putting the heater in the drivers floor.

No snow or ice on the car, and it was toasty when I'd get in.

If I was on-call, I just set it for an hour on and then an hour off. Otherwise, it would kick on an hour or so before I had to leave.
 
I have a 400W cont/800W peak inverter hardwired in my Sequoia. Wired directly to the battery, draws power via a fused heavy duty relay activated by a switch on the dash. Ran the power cable from the relay through the firewall and under the dash to the inverter which is mounted under the passenger seat. Then ran wires through conduit under the console to the sockets I mounted in the console in the back. Looks factory, it came out really well. Kids used it on trips to watch movies on their laptops, charge phones and iPads, etc. Works great, we use it all the time. The Sequoia has a 140 amp alternator so I never had an issue with power or the battery.

Not sure I understand how they are going to get 300 watts continuous out of a cigarette lighter plug powered inverter. Most cars have those circuits at 20 amps. At 12.7V @ 20 amps youre going to get 254W maximum off a healthy automotive battery, if the fuse didn't blow, and if the inverter was 100% efficient, which is isnt. Even with the engine on and the alternator pumping out roughly 14V you'd still be pulling over 20 amps to get to 300W. Maybe I've been out of school too long and my math is fuzzy....? Most automotive fuses would blow well before you'd get 300W, and if they didnt you probably would be wanting them to, depending on how many plugs, crimps, and various connections the factory wiring harness has.

Even ignoring all that, a 300W heater in a cold car wont do much, I would suspect. You would probably need closer to a 1000W heater to do make any real difference.

If the car takes that long to heat up, I would check on the thermostat to see if its opening too soon, and maybe clean up the heater core. I would check the blend doors as well. My 240sx wasnt putting out much heat at all a couple winters ago, and changing the t-stat, flushing the cooling system, and removing the blower and cleaning it up as well as blowing out the heater core fins made a huge difference in how soon, and how much, heat I got.
 
My father has Reynaud's and he uses a blowdryer rigged up with an extension cord and a timer to preheat his car. He lives up in central NY where it gets mighty cold but his system has worked for him for several years without issue. I forget how long he has it set to preheat his car but I've gotten into it and it is always toasty by the time we get into it. He doesn't have a garage either, his Subaru has the rain guards so he is able to route his extension cord up through the top of the window so it doesn't allow any rain/snow in.

If you are considering doing this, Costco currently has some really nice American made 12/3 extension cords on sale. $29.99 (in store) for a two pack and they are rated for 1875 watts.

https://www.costco.com/Outdoor-50ft-Extension-Cord%2c-2-pack.product.100336733.html
 
Get another car with heated seats. Mine gets toasty after 2 or 3 minutes. Or get a remote start and have the heat on. That's what a lot of people use to remote start function for. As others said an electric heater won't put out enough heat due to limited wattage. Most inverters are only good for 300-400 watts. Those electric heaters are 1500 Watts.
 
So installing inverter, ceramic heater and high powered battery, spending $$ for same vs warming up the Subaru for 10 minutes?


Agree with warming up first, save yourself $$ and time.
 
From a technical point of view, a ceramic heater will consume about 1500W. NOT accounting for losses, that's 125 amps from your battery/alternator. You would need a quality 2000W inverter, wired directly to your battery, with large cables.

Instant heat is very difficult to achieve. Is using an extension cord to a heater an option?
 
Thank you, everyone.

I actually dress pretty warmly. I do not have issues with the body as such but the toes. Even with 2 layers of woolen socks and best possible thermal insulation possible shoes, my toes freeze. I have even tried those toe warmers but they don't help much. I would have just put up the picture but its too ugly looks like I am almost bleeding from my toes.

For the heater in the car with an extension cord idea, we have a ton of restrictions in this development due to past litigations by the former tenants. I can not use the extension cord that long or leave the car idling more than 5 minutes. I still leave it idling more than 5 minutes sometimes when its below freezing and have gotten notices from the management. I do have a seat warmer. Even though that gets warm pretty quickly, its the toes that bother the most. I will move out of this place as soon as my kid is done schooling but until then I have to deal with all these regulation vigilantes.


Thanks @krismoriah72, this seems to be the most viable option at this moment. I can just leave it on for 5 or so minutes. Is there any place where I can actually check this out, like outdoor sports store like REI or something?

@quint, can you please link the inverter you use?

Thanks again.
 
The amazon basics car plug in seat heater worked surprisingly well for me, just straps over your seat. I bought one for my sister in law as well and she says she has to turn it down since it gets so hot. She does wear yoga and stretchy pants all year round, so she may feel it better as opposed to the layers you wear. You can also probably find a 12v blow dryer that may work alot better than one of those ceramic heaters. You wont be able to run both on the same circuit though.
 
The wattage ratings on 12v receptacles should be viewed as capable of handling that for very short duration only.

The standard 12v connector is a horrible electrical connection which will wear out passing just 60 watts, and that is when it is fed 10AWG right from a battery. The 12v receptacles on vehicles are nowhere near this wire gauge, and have long convoluted circuits with many connections, all which increase resistance substantially.

I have a 200 watt Lasko heater. It draws ~19 amps though my 400 watt pure sine wave inverter, and does very little in terms of actual heating.

Any inverter run through a ciggy plug is likely going to have its low voltage alarm screaming passing more than 120 watts, even with engine running, and soon after that one will smell melting plastic if the fuse does not blow first.

Inverters do not like engine heat/underhood environment, they should not really be hard mounted in engine compartment, and the DC wiring to an inverter should be quite thick, so that the pesky low voltage alarm does not scream due to voltage drop on the wiring.

The 12v hair driers sold are ridiculously ineffective, but if one insists on using one, they should cut off the ciggy plug and wire it directly to battery with 10AWG, fused at the battery 30 amps, and all this effort would have one laugh, and then cry, at the absolute inefficacy of the efforts.

An while my 19 amp 200 watt lasko heater is viable, my 90Ah battery could not power it for long. It is not simple math, The Peukert effect says the higher the load the less capcity a battery has.

My 90Ah battery when new and fully charged could provide 4.5 amps for 20 hours before voltage falls to 10.5v, which is considered 100% discharged, but this does not mean it can provide 9 amps for 10 hours or 18 amps for 5.

If the battery alone as ever asked to power the inverter, even for short periods, it would seriously affect battery longevity, as there is little likelyhood of the vehicles charging system being able to return the battery back upto 100% state of charge. And all lead acid batteries are happiest when fully charged, and kept cool. Anything less than this is detrimental to their well being.

While one can discharge a battery from 100% to 80% in a few minutes with a big load on it, one cannot return a battery from 80% to 100% in less than 3.5 hours, and that is with a charging source holding the battery at ideal voltages for those 3.5 hours, which NO vehicle will ever do, even if is it run for 3.5 hours.
 
Do you have poor circulation? I’d get a note from your doctor and give a copy to management that you need to warm up your car.
 
Originally Posted By: Nick1994
Do you have poor circulation? I’d get a note from your doctor and give a copy to management that you need to warm up your car.


Are you thinking he has diabetes? The feet are the first to go in that situation. Wearing warmer wool socks might help but if circulation is bad, I can see how the feet would still be cold.
 
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