van camp, thermostat controled start

Hi, I'm a contract disaster inspector for FEMA. I spend more nights than I care to admit sleeping in a vehical at disaster sites. I use to use my Prius and but for its size it was great, I could park it and leave it running with the climate control set and they car would cycle the engine on and off as needed would keep me cool or warm all night and use littke fuel doing so.

I needed more room so I've converted a 2002 Chevy awd Astro passenger van with rear air and heat into my deployment vehical. I want to set it up so while I'm overnighting in it a themostat I install in the vehical will trigger the engine to start and run till the cabin reaches the desired temp then shuts off.The van dose not have climate control but thats OK as I can either have the vans heat or AC in the on position when I turn it off to go to sleep, then the thermostat would signal the van to start and stop the engine.I'm thinking this could be done quite straight foward by using relays to trigger the starter with the key in the on position. I have no problem leaving the keys in the ignition while in the van overnight but I'm conserned leaving the ignition system and the fuel pump energized all this time.Although Im not an alarm installer I'm pretty handy and I managed Audiovox owned retail stores back in the '90s where we installed Audiovox Prestige alarms and cell phones.Up for sudgestions how to do this and what would be required, any Ideals????  AND YES I have a CO alarm installed.

I'm sure someone might have a better answer, but an easier method would be to install a remote start system that has a triggered start input (DEI & Compustar both have them). Then use a thermostat switch to supply a ground signal to that wire (would probably have to find a way to change from a solid ground to just a pulsed ground for the trigger). Then the remote start would simply run for it's set run time and shut off. I have never tried it, but I would have to assume that the triggered inputs would also work to turn off the remote start. If that's the case then you could wire up some relays so that when the thermostat kicked on it would trigger a ground pulse to the trigger input wire; then somehow set it up to send another pulse when the thermostat turns off to possibly shut down the remote starter. This is all theoretical but I'm sure someone here can expand on it to offer more help.Kenny

Owner / Technician

KKD Garage LLC

Albany, NY 12205

Compustar has the feature you desire. You can set to start at pre determined temperature . With there optional thermistor.

metz35 wrote: Compustar has the feature you desire. You can set to start at pre determined temperature . With there optional thermistor.

I though about that as well, but I think the highest setting is 14*F or something around there... which probably won't work for him... lol.Kenny

Owner / Technician

KKD Garage LLC

Albany, NY 12205

There are only 4 options -10c / 14f -20c / -4f -5c / 23f -15c / 5f

You may want to look into RV electronics for this. Considering many RV's have these features running off of a small generator, maybe that would be an option. Obviously a generator needs to exhaust OUTSIDE the space you will be occupying but it should be fairly easy.  Check out some RV forums as well, maybe see if anyone has any other ideas besides a typical generator? Think outside the box here, and you can find an easy and cheap solution I am sure of it.To master and control electricity is perfection. *evil laugh*

Ahh.. I couldn't remember off the top of my head and thought 14*f was the highest temp setting. But I would assume he would want it to come on well before 23*fKenny

Owner / Technician

KKD Garage LLC

Albany, NY 12205

Thanks all for responses, Kenny's comment seems on-track I'm going to look into it, If anyone has suggestions of units with a trigger wire input for remote start I'll be all ears. A small 2k inverter Gen Set was my first thought but after thinking about it I nixed the ideal due to all the redundancy of components, ( heater, AC, fuel storage ) and the increased space, installation and maintenance required. I want to keep this simple, stealth and cost effective. Plus Gen sets are real temptations for even the "honest folks" after a disaster, it gets nutz out there. Again thanks for the comments, I'm reading them and will in the end post here what I ended up installing and how it works.

After thinking on it a few days Kenny is right in that an old rotary thermostat would likely be the best solution. It is just a matter of making that work with say a DEI (viper clifford etc) remote start. Finding a diagram of the required connections to that type of thermostat would be the first step. To master and control electricity is perfection. *evil laugh*

Just doing rough research a mercury low voltage (home) thermostat requires 24-30v input. Obviously this will be the biggest issue. To master and control electricity is perfection. *evil laugh*