Since there are no places to plug in at work and our highs are gonna be around 8 degrees in a few days, and since its already a hard cold start after work, I had an idea and was gonna run it by you guys to get your input....whether or not it will work, design flaws, suggestions, etc....

I'm going to get another battery and put it in the bed of the truck. I'm going to run one wire from it to the active battery system with a switch to cut it off while the truck is off. The other switch will turn power on from the extra battery to a power inverter which will have an extension cord hooked to it, ran thru the firewall and hooked into my block heater cord.

As long as I have the switch on to the active system while the truck is running, the battery will charge, then while i'm at work I'll switch off the active system and switch on the power inverter to the block heater..... any ideas on how long you think this battery will last powering a block heater? Is it a stupid idea from the beginning anyway??

Thanks,
Mike

 

The block heater draws aprox. 750 watts. You would want about a 1000 watt inverter to run it. That much juice takes a pretty good sized cable to run between the battery and inverter. A single battery, in the cold, may run for an hour or two at the most. I know I could kill a single battery running my 300 watt inverter in a few hours.

 

thats exactly the type of info i was looking for....

so what if i hooked 3 deep well batteries together (series or parallel?) and did the same thing....?? Quite expensive, yes....but effective?

 

how bout use one battery like you said.... but plug it in 30min or so before you leave?

 

thats where it kinda gets complicated for me...i work for a union so getting enough time to run to the parking lot would be hard to do....and the parking lot is so huge and full when I get there I'd have to run 1/4 mile to my truck, flip the switch, then run 1/4 mile back to work in 15 mins....puts me in a really tough spot. excellent idea though if i could park within a reasonable distance of the building

 

How about just putting a diesel generator in the bed of your truck and firing it up at lunch?

 

not a bad idea there... they make them that run off your diesel tank... And just to ask, what do the other guys do?

 

I have a topper so a diesel generator would probably release too much heat and CO into the cab....I've got a temporary fix for now...I just eat my lunch on my first break, and run out during lunch and drive it closer (since by the time my lunch comes around, people are already leavin') and just let it sit there and idle the whole time at lunch, leaving atleast a little warmth for quittin' time.

but as far as one of my contraptions are concerned, it has my curiosity now and I'm wondering how easy it would be to pull off

 

they make one that mounts under the hood, cost about 100 bucks and is about the size of a large oil filter... It circulates the coolant therefor warming the block...

 

Look into Webasto or Espar heaters.