Last summer in Greenland, with water temperature barely above freezing and air about the same, we decided to see how tough we were, and if we could sleep with the diesel heater turned off.
A double dose of blankets did the trick. But the pain of warming the cool sheets at the beginning of our sojurn abed disuaded us from further experimentation.
This year we decided to experiment with – now don’t laugh – a bed warmer. Not the familiar electric blanket, but something which goes between the bottom sheet and mattress pad.
We have been testing this device and are pleased to report it works really well. Ten to fifteen minutes after being turned on that painful chill has been removed from between the sheets, and our bed is pleasingly toasty.
We are happy to tell you that power consumption is minimal – about 75 watts at the highest setting. If you assume this runs for 15 minutes, allowing for some inverter losses we are talking about something in the neighborhood of two or three amp hours of capacity in a 12 volt system. And the diesel heater stays off all night.
What’s next you might ask? Well, we have not solved the problem of the ice cold toilet seat…
Posted by Steve Dashew (April 17, 2009)
December 17th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Steve,
We live remotely in the Rockies and do a lot of heating with wood. We sleep cool. We use heating pads like you are using and really like taking the chill off before we get into bed. Both Marcy and I turn the pads off when we get into bed. One other thing that makes sleeping in cool conditions comfortable is flannel sheets. They are too warm in the summer but are great when it is cold.
Daryl