Be a little careful with this too. One day, it had to be about 15 below here, and I had a pretty solid sheet of ice on my windshield. I ran outside, started the car, leaving the defrost set to high, the fan to Hi, and went in to fill the travel thermos. I went back out, to sit until the window was clear when suddenly “cr-aaa-ck”. Big, side to side crack right in front of me.
Well, when it’s really cold it can be difficult to start the engine. It also causes more wear than necessary to run the engine cold, so it’s better to pre-heat it. Thirdly, at least where I live, electricity is cleaner than burning fuel for this purpose. I don’t know how long you run the car like that, and how much fuel it consumes, but I’d guess electricity is cheaper too (I know you have lower gas prices than we do though, but it probably applies anyway).
I’ve found that draping an old beach towel over my windshield works wonders to eliminate time before work. It won’t work well if it snows or rains the night before, but a towel will soak up the moisture that would otherwise condense on your windshield if it’s just going to be cold. Rip it off, and you’re set to drive off as soon as your engine warms up and the idle dies down.
Hot water just sounds like a ticket to having a cracked windshield.
In our namby-pamby British climate where it seldom gets more than a few degrees below zero (and that’s Celsius zero), water from the cold tap usually works to clear the frost, as long as you free the wipers and set them going on intermittent so the water gets wiped off before it can refreeze. If it’s really cold I use tepid water.
Where do you put the eletrical heater you mentioned?
Except that we are talking warm water, not boiling hot, and tempered glass, and many people do it and I have never heard of a cracked windshield for doing it.
So, where do you get those “sounds”?
Henrichek can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think he was referring to block heaters.
I use some spray I bought at an autoparts store. It’s apparently similar to the stuff they use to keep airplanes from icing up. When I get home for the day, I spritz the widshield with the stuff. Next AM, just flipping on the windshield wipers clears what little accumulation there might be on the glass…
Yes, that’s what I was referring to. They heat the engine for you, mainly making it easier to start but also reduces the extra wear that running in cold weather causes. Many people also have electrical heaters inside the cars to keep the interior warm and nice, but that’s just a matter of comfort and not necessary. Having only the block heater reduces the time it takes to heat the car interior also, since it can start pumping in warm air sooner than when starting cold.
These are standard issue on all cars sold here, and they ought to be in all places with cold climate. I would think it a big waste to run the engine in order to warm up the car, from an environmental (pollution) as well as an economical (fuel, extra wear) standpoint. If you live in a climate zone with cold winters, I recommend that you get one installed unless you have one already.
There are timers made especially for this purpose. Normally I just plug the cord in when parking, and set the timer on my expected time of departure. The timer then turns the power on ahead of this time, how soon depending on the temperature. The colder it is, the earlier it turns on to make sure the car is warmed up in time. It’s quite convenient :).
So I would need to run an extension cord through the snow to my house, looks like? (Not having an external outlet sucks too.) If I had a garage that would be easy, but if I had a garage I wouldn’t need to warm up my car as much. Oh well!
The reason people use a block heater is more because the oil gets too thick to start the engine, not because of the extra engine warm up time.
Yes, unfortunately that is necessary, but unless you have a very large distance between your car and the house, it’s not such a big deal to lay down an extension cord. If you are even more ambitious, you could dig down an outdoors cable and erect a post similar to this at the parking spot. Simple ones just have the outlet, and more fancy ones have built in timers. Most of them have locks to keep people away from “borrowing” electricity.
