Dodged my first bullet of the season

When I left for work this morning at 5 am, it was 38 degrees. Half-way through the day, a front blew in behind 48 mph winds and the temps dropped drastically into the low 20's. The original forecast had it at staying above freezing for the day, but that is the Midwest for you.

I left 2 oil-filled heaters in the van (1 at the machine and 1 in the cargo area) since I didn't have the machine winterized after cleaning a few stores last night. Normally, that would keep the interior temps around 65 degrees which is where I like it just in case the power goes out in order to buy me some time.

Well, today I got off work early and made it home by 6 pm to find that the power had gone out for about an hour due to the wind dropping a branch on the drop line to the house. One of my neighbors is a linesman for the local utilities and noticed it while working in his yard. He took care of it and had it repaired for me on the spot, otherwise it would still have been out.

When I checked the van, I wasn't happy. One of the heaters (next to the machine) has a thermostat and it was off. Due to the loss of power, the heater required a manual re-start which couldn't happen until I discovered it. The cheaper heater in the back is simply on full heat or off and it resumed heating when the power was restored......that saved me from a bad day.

The temps in the cargo area were around 55 degrees, but the front of the van at the machine was at 32 degrees exactly!! As long as it didn't drop below that during the hour-long outage, I should be okay with the van's insulation, but it was a scare.

Sometimes cheap heaters are the way to go....plan on replacing the other one first chance this week. Right now it is at almost 70 degrees inside and I think that I might go out and push some antifreeze through it just to be sure tonight.

How I would love to be cleaning in the mild climate states again......too much to worry about this time of year.

Same thing on my main heater; has to manually be turned back on if there is a power loss. Breaker trips are the normal thing. Went and got a vornado heater, seams to circulate the heat more. Recent temps have gone down to mid to low 20's. And can expect mid to low teens at times each winter. The vornado on med setting will keep the cargo area at 45°+.
They don't seem to put out a lot of heat, but it works?!

I've been hearing a lot about those vornado heaters lately....people seem to either love or hate them. They idea of getting even heat in a space sounds good to me.

Might consider one instead of the second oil-filled heater to make a more uniform temperature. Since I just winterized the tm, there is room to experiment different options.

For those that live in the warm parts of the world.

This is what I discovered today, I must have left the drain valve partly open last night.  Frozen solid!!  That is the enemy around here, think about what it would do to your machine if the power fails and you didn't winterize?

WOW, since it's Thanksgiving, I'm thankful that I live in California where the coldest night ever was over 40 degrees, happy Thanksgiving Rob and everyone :-)

Vornado heaters work good because of the built-in fan. A ceramic heater should be accompanied by a fan to even the heat in the truck.

Fuzzsucker wrote:Vornado heaters work good because of the built-in  fan. A ceramic heater should  be accompanied  by a fan to even the heat in the truck.

My biggest concern is reliability. I have tried small ceramic fans with built-in fans in the past, but they never survived heavy usage and left me with a cold van a few times.

I am concluding that I just need to keep it in the garage with a large IR patio-style heater mounted over the machine. This might be the only way to keep things warm down on the floor where the butlers sit instead of a foot or two above it. It might look a little strange with the glow inside at night, but sounds like the way to go on paper.