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[valnar]

Here in Ohio, there are occasional days in the Winter where it can drop considerably below freezing.  This is my first year with my motorcycle and want to protect it from getting too cold on those days.  I park it in an attached garage.  Fortunately there is one common wall to my house which keeps it around 10 degrees warmer than outside, but even that can't compensate for < 0 degrees fahrenheit.

I want something temporary for those ultra cold days & nights.  I already own a portable space heater in storage, but its low and high settings take around 650W and 1300W respectively.  I've read a little about radiant or infrared heaters that supposedly heat objects but not the air.  They are also more efficient than traditional space heaters.

Does anyone have any experience with these?  Are they safe?

More importantly, would such a heater work on keeping a Zero motorcycle's battery warm enough to take the edge off sub-zero temps?

-Robert

[Doug S]

They can't be "more efficient" than resistive heaters. Resistive heaters are by definition 100% efficient -- in pretty much all machinery, lost efficiency means heat gets generated, and that's not considered "waste" in a heater.

Infrared heaters FEEL a bit better because they warm your skin directly, instead of trying to heat up all the air first, which then warms your skin. It may be a bit better to heat the motorcycle "skin" directly, but the cold air is still going to keep it from really heating up the motorcycle very fast.

Electric heat is just expensive no matter how you cut it.

[Richard230]

Try wrapping your motorcycle in an old electric blanket.   

[Crissa]

Efficiency is measured in many ways.  If you just want to prevent condensation, radiant heaters are 'efficient' by skipping heating all the air and only surfaces in view, which creates a minor convective cycle which draws away moisture from those surfaces.

In the woods where I live and grew up on the coast of Oregon, it was common to place a 100w bulb in a shack to keep the high humidity from penetrating into the stored objects.

So what I do is I have a ceramic bulb (like for a chicken or lizard enclosure) in a metal housing (like for a chicken coop or work lamp) and I hang that aiming where the the bikes are.

I've done this on our bicycles and it's very efficient at drying things off without using alot of energy or accidentally drawing in moisture like a fan sometimes can.

A heating blanket would succeed the same way on a smaller scale and possibly use even less energy but you'd have to remember to replace it after each ride.  This is why the top-end electrics have this built in, and it's a common add-on to all cars in Canada.

-Crissa

[valnar]

A targeted low wattage option aimed at my bike would be ideal.

I never considered a warming blanket.  Is there one I can just drape over my seat to produce enough heat to keep the battery warmer than ambient, without overheating the seat material?  Sounds easy to just flop it over.

[Crissa]

I use this:  https://www.amazon.com/BOEESPAT-Ceramic-Emitter-Reptile-Infrared/dp/B07WLZB5T4
In this:  https://www.amazon.com/Woods-Clamp-Lamp-Reflector-Guard/dp/B003XV8QOU

I can hang, point, forget it.  I do also use potting mats in extreme cold sometimes, like to keep the propane running, but this is my mainstay.

-Crissa

Potting mat:  https://www.amazon.com/VIVOSUN-Waterproof-Seedling-Hydroponic-Standard/dp/B00P7U259C

I'm sure there are other, more efficient options out there, but this is pretty simple and cheap.  The amount of heat needed is only enough to stop condensation, right?  And that's a matter of less than a fraction of a degree compared to air temp.

I couldn't find a reasonably priced vinyl blanket on Amazon.  It could be a more efficient thing, but not the ones I saw offered.

[valnar]

Thanks.  I'll think about that or perhaps the electric blanket route.  It's not condensation per se, although that is important, but it's more for just keeping the battery outside of ultra-cold temps.  The biggest decision one way or another is whether I want that heat for anything else, like working on the bike.  Obviously the blanket won't help with that.

[Richard230]

A targeted low wattage option aimed at my bike would be ideal.

I never considered a warming blanket.  Is there one I can just drape over my seat to produce enough heat to keep the battery warmer than ambient, without overheating the seat material?  Sounds easy to just flop it over.

Aerostitch used an electric blanket to keep the battery warm while their FX was sitting outside their garage during sub-zero temperatures.  It seemed to work well enough to allow the battery to charge.  No doubt you can find a cheap twin-size electric blanket on Amazon, or maybe one of your neighbors has one that they want to get rid of.  A twin size blanket is probably large enough to be wrapped completely around the battery area of your entire bike.

[ESokoloff]

I think you would be better off installing a silicone resistive heater https://www.mcmaster.com/silicone-heaters directly to the battery & just plug it in when needed (may also need a thermostat control).

You may also consider electrically heated clothing.

Milwaukee Tools offers this https://www.google.com/search?q=Milwaukee+heated+jacket&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari jacket that's 12v so you should also be able to plug into the bikes 12v system to use when riding. 
I use a Warm & Safe heated shirt for riding but could be set up for off the bike useage .
https://www.warmnsafe.com/collections/heat-layer-shirt

NOTE: The power supply on these bikes is low wattage so do your homework before adding too much additional load(s). 

[ESokoloff]

They can't be "more efficient" than resistive heaters. Resistive heaters are by definition 100% efficient -- in pretty much all machinery, lost efficiency means heat gets generated, and that's not considered "waste" in a heater.

Infrared heaters FEEL a bit better because they warm your skin directly, instead of trying to heat up all the air first, which then warms your skin. It may be a bit better to heat the motorcycle "skin" directly, but the cold air is still going to keep it from really heating up the motorcycle very fast.

Electric heat is just expensive no matter how you cut it.

Infrared heaters are more efficient at heating objects as they don't require a medium (air).

Also Heat Pumps can be upwards of 300% more efficient at heating (air) then resistive heating).

P.S. HVAC is my thing. 

[Doug S]

Infrared heaters are more efficient at heating objects as they don't require a medium (air).

Granted, to an extent. But the cold air does drain heat off the objects, so until you get the air heated up too, the amount of heating you can do is limited.

Also Heat Pumps can be upwards of 300% more efficient at heating (air) then resistive heating).

P.S. HVAC is my thing.

That's true, too. But heat pumps don't really create much heat (they do create some waste heat). Mostly they just move heat from one place to another. And with the high cost of electricity compared to, say, natural gas, it's probably still cheaper to heat your home with a gas furnace than a heat pump.

[Crissa]

Over the life of a heat pump it's cheaper.  Even for mostly heating.

But this depends on what you want the heat to do:  Dry up condensation associated with cold; raise the battery pack temp to charge/use, etc.

For me, moisture is the big one.  So radiant is best.  For charging, a heat pad (with contact thermal control so it knows when to turn off) is best.  For actually using the bike, a blanket may be best, because capacitors are also susceptible to the cold.

-Crissa

[valnar]

I appreciate the discussion but I think it ventured a bit away from just keeping my motorcycle warm, while parked.

I like the electric blanket route.  I thought about the ceramic heat emitter but since that's somewhat directional, I'm not sure how I hit both sides of the battery without buying two of them.

[JaimeC]

The question NOBODY seemed to have asked is WHY you want to keep your motorcycle warm?  Is it because you know if it gets too cold you won't be able to charge it to take it for a ride?  Or is there another reason.  There IS no humidity in air below the freezing point, by the way.  That's why you get so much static discharge walking across a rug in the winter and hardly ever in the summer.

[Crissa]

There is no humidity in the air because it all condensed onto the bike!

If your rug was in the garage where you brought the bike in, it would be damp.

-Crissa