[Mark Slaney]

  Was having a think today about different ways to keep the tm from freezing as this morning, tm was ok but supply pump had frozen. So has anyone tried/thought of installing a immersion heater in there fresh water tank. As i have a spitfire which sits on to of the tank, would it be possible to heat the water in the tank to a certain degree so the heat rises stopping everything else from freezing. Just a thought??

Mark.

[Jim_77]

Mark, is your van fully ply lined and insulated all the way up the sides and roof as well?

[Mark Slaney]

  Only sides and door ply'd and insulated, never got round to doing roof.

[Jim_77]

Well that's your problem then!!!  Get the rest of it ply lined and insulated and you'll notice a stupendous difference.  The insulation you've got at the moment is useless without the whole thing being done.

An oil filled rad and a small desk fan will keep it nice and toast at the extremities.  I checked my thermometers in the cold spots this morning, -7 outside air temp but +2 inside at the coldest point/.. .the back of the van was actually pretty toasty!

[Neil Williams]

Get some old quilts/sleeping bags and cover what needs to be covered leaving a small enough void for warm air from a fan heater to blow into.

[Jim_77]

[Neil Williams]

Was that for me?

[Mark Slaney]

  Yes i know all that, i have 3 x 15 tog quilts over the machine already. I was only a different thought/idea for the heating the tm overnight. For some reason the supply pump froze, took me about 20 min's to de-frost with a hair dryer and just got me thinking about different ways of heating the machine.  

mark

[robert meldrum]

                                                                                                                                                                               

  ambient-ufh.co.uk


                                                                                                                                         

[brianbarber]

If it's your fresh water tank, use a 300w aquarium heater, assuming you park close to your house ,I use these for my WFP , they keep water well above freezing and van is nice and warm by the morning.


Mr B

[The Carpet Cleaning Pro]

I just run a small fan heater in back of van on extention into garage over night and this works great. Never have to scrape the windscreen as never no frost on it. We worked out the cost of the heater and it works out at about 50 pence a day...peanuts compared to buying new pumps, brass fittings etc

[wynne jones]

Top tip, don't put your heater on an rcd plug. The main box tripped on something indoors and I forgot to reset the RCD on the plug for the heater in the van.

The feed pipe was solid and I still don't fire her up. We had 3-4 inches of snow last night and when I opened the car door it ripped the rubber seal off with it!

[ianharper]

anti freeze though your chem pick up. then run it out before you start work the next day. this will save on fuel bills. you can reuse to save more money. worked really well years ago with a steam cleaner when i did plant cleaning and was in van or out in workshop all night.

[wynne jones]

I'm winterizing it tomorrow Ian because I will be away, but I really can't be arsed to do that every night for the sake of a couple of quid. I know it sounds a bit lame and you do avoid potential expensive disasters but I'm a lazy git.

[Neil Williams]

Top tip, don't put your heater on an rcd plug. The main box tripped on something indoors and I forgot to reset the RCD on the plug for the heater in the van.
The feed pipe was solid and I still don't fire her up.

The exact same thing happened to a TM'er just up the road from me.
Clearly for safety it makes sense to add an RCD but equally it's something else to be worried about.

[wynne jones]

Well if it don't work tomorrow I'll scrap it and just fling my rotary in the back, dry in thirty minutes jobs a gooden. If you can't beat 'em.