Charging from the Car Heater Plug Box is a very intriguing possibility since the Heater Plug Box provides Schuko with all the cabling and the fuses already installed. However, you need to look out for the following things:

• The electricity metering in a parking lot/garage block could be shared for the entire neighbourhood (unless you have the heater box stuck to your house). That means that your neighbours will pay for your charging, and they aren’t going to like you and your EV car.
• The car box always turns off after 2 hours. It is possible to modify this, but definitely not on a shared car heater box (at least not without an approval from the housing company).
• The Schuko plug in the car heater box will mechanically suffer if you simply hang the mobile charger with its entire weight on the Schuko plug.
• The electrical wiring may be old.

However, a lot of the above can be remedied easily:

• Shared metering: often it is possible to get a deal with the housing company, to pay around 30 EUR per month (the money is negotiable) for unlimited charging from the heater box.
• The 2-hour limit can be disabled, see below.
• The Schuko mechanical strain can be reduced easily by properly attaching the charger. See below for ideas.
• If the apartment block has been built before 2000s, chances are that the wiring is old. In such case you should only charge at around 8A or even less.

Please see the Schuko Charging for additional hints and restrictions which apply when charging from Schuko - for example check whether the fuses are 10A or 16A.

When everything of the above is sorted out, let’s begin.

Removing 2-hour Limit

To beat the 2-hour limit, you can buy a replacement electric hour wheel. With that, you can replace the 2-hour-fixed hour wheel in your Car Heater Box with this configurable wheel; you can then simply configure the wheel to be always on. However, first make sure that the Car Heater Box is compatible with such a wheel; for example Fibox Piharasia.

To open the Fibox box, just unscrew the 2 screws, then plug out the old hour wheel, plug in the replacement one, put the lid back and screw the screws back - that’s all. MAKE SURE TO TURN OFF ALL THE FUSES FIRST, both in the Fibox box and in your house fuse box. When finished, turn the fuses back on, configure the hour wheel to be always on, and try out that the hour wheel provides electricity (e.g. by plugging in a cellphone charger).

Plugging The Charger Into The Box

If your car charger has connector plug with a bent cable out, that’s excellent: it will fit inside of the Heater Plug Box. You can then plug the charger plug directly into the hour wheel and lead the cable outside of the Car Heater Plug Box, without any need for extension cord. However, my charger had connector plug with straight cable out which wouldn’t fit inside of the Car Heater Plug Box. Therefore I had to buy an extension cord with bent connector cable - the straight connector wouldn’t fit in. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a proper durable IP44 outdoor extension cord with the straight connector, that’s why I bought an inside one: JATKOJOHTO OPAL 1-OSAINEN MAADOITETTU 5M.

• Since the cable is not rated for outside use, I had to make sure that both ends are absolutely insulated from water. Luckily, one end is well-protected inside of the Car Heater Plug Box itself; I’ve wrapped the other end with the Suojakotelo (mentioned in the previous blog).
• The cable wires are only 1,5mm thick, which means 10A charging tops. I’ve used the cable to charge the car for 1 month at 10A so far, without any issues.

To reduce mechanical stress on the hour wheel, I’ve added a duct tape onto the cable in the spot where it leaves the Car Heater Plug Box. This way, the cable is supported by the duct tape and is not hanging on the hour wheel itself.

Photo

The photo of my setup. Note the always-on hour-wheel, connected to the white extension cord. A black duck-tape is added to the cord just before it leaves the Plug Box, to protect the hour-wheel from mechanical stress. The other end of the white extension cord is protected by the suojakotelo where it connects to the Zencar charger. The Zencar is firmly attached to the wall; the car charging cable is wrapped around the Plug Box. The suojakotelo and the cables are normally hidden beneath a wooden staircase, but I’ve removed the staircase temporarily for the photo.