I recently bought a second truck for my bread route, it's an e350 econloline with rear heat that blows really hot/strong, I was thinking of laying down a plywood floor and venting the rear heat under the plywood and sealing the edges to trap heat under there. my primary truck is a 3500 series with a grumman style box built in back, theres a spot on the wooden floor in there that gets hot from the exhaust and when I leave a box there for a little while the bread heats up nice and customers love it. was wondering if anyone ever tried something similar?
Heated floor in e-350
- Thread starter vanman112
- Start date
Jack_Berry
Moderator Emeritus
i don't know how that would work BUT i saw a TLC home improvement show sat nite where a heated floor was laid using panels that looked like wired versions of that boxed laminate floor. maybe plug that into an inverter powered by a pair of batteries and its sock time in the rear. this was just a crazy thought i had after reading your post. maybe one of our resident electricians can improve it.
well I've convinced myself it would work, there would be room between the wood and the metal floor, which could be sealed off with gap sealer on the sides.
would cost me $0 as well, this van was an nypd transport van and already has a huge separate heat blower in the back so I figured why the heck not.
would cost me $0 as well, this van was an nypd transport van and already has a huge separate heat blower in the back so I figured why the heck not.
P51bombay
Expert Expediter
In mats that you lay down?
Jack_Berry
Moderator Emeritus
yeah. there wasn't much said about them but the floor was heated with wires and not water. don't know much more about them.
P51bombay
Expert Expediter
I thought so, all that stuff comes out of Canada on my truck.
Nuheat: The leading radiant electric floor heating system manufacturer. Under floor heat for a warm floor.
Thy have some nice lengths of standard size mats. You would have to make sure you have thick enough material over top to handle the pressures of skids, forks etc so as not to damage the wiring. Could work. I didn't see a power consumption figure for the wiring will have to look again, nice idea.
Rob
Rob
P51bombay
Expert Expediter
They also do custom mats, size can be whatever you like (within limits set by their machine size) and odd shapes can be accomodated by making a paper template and sending that in. That said those systems run on either 110V or 220V so an inverter would be needed and I'm guessing here but I'd say the power consumption is a bit high. Not only that I think the original question was about using an existing heat source for a bun warmer.
Actually the closest I've done is take a piece of plastic piping and connected it to the heater outlets (floor ones) in my van and have it blow the warm air into my bunk area right under the bed. Since I was utilizing an open framing with an air matress it worked ok but on the coldest nights it was'nt real warm back there. Yes it helped keep the bunk area warmer, so the idea of the blower going under the floor might work but I'd build in a hole at the front or the sides so the airflow has somewhere to go and not just build back pressure unless you're leaving the backend open.
Rob
Rob