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Re: Pre-Conditioning & the mystery of the Parking Heater

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 10:38 am
by pjm007
Cholsey wrote: Tue May 22, 2018 10:10 am
Hi PJM007 - just ran the diagnostics check on the app and the result shows positive for a heater. Suggests to me that my car does have a heater. Thoughts?

Yes I think we all have heaters but not the “Parking Heater” element here in the UK it would seem.

The Volvo documentation is I think quite confusing. It describes the “heater” as having two components or sub-functions, the Parking Heater (PH) and the Auxiliary Heater (AH). The AH is described as what we all would assume to be the ordinary car heater. The PH is for use with pre-conditioning only.

Many of us have reported that pre-conditioning in the Volvo On Call (VOC) app does not work to heat up the car in cold weather. That’s because we have no PH installed. Maybe it is installed in some countries but not apparently in the UK. We have to use the remote start function in the VOC app in order to get defrosting etc. initiated. That does work.

By the way, another thread refers to pre-conditioning working to “cool” the car in warm weather. It does function from the VOC app, but doesn’t need a PH and just ventilates by bringing outside air into the car. I have found so far it doesn’t cool at all because the air it brings in is warm from outside (obviously). I will have that checked at my 3 month health check.

The Parking Climate function in the Climate screens of the Central Display also works to “Keep Climate Comfort” when you park the car and want to maintain the temperature while you sit in it, rather than let it warm up, or cool down.

Having said all that (sorry for the lack of brevity), if anyone with later deliveries can actually confirm that PHs are now being shipped with UK XC40s then many of us would be quite interested!

Re: Pre-Conditioning & the mystery of the Parking Heater

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 12:58 pm
by Cholsey
So the Volvo diagnostic app just tells me I have a heater in my car? That is quite bizarre!

Re: Pre-Conditioning & the mystery of the Parking Heater

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 1:21 pm
by MichelR
Parking heater is a separate option you can order at least in my country.
Without it you can only hear up the car a bit with remote start.

But this will not completely heatup and desfrost the car I guess.
Therefore ordered my car with optioneel parking heater.

With parking heater you can also program it in the app like I like to have my car a certain temperature at say 6:00 in the morning. The heater starts up before that time and at 6:00 your car is nice and warm and defrosted. The parking heater burns you’re petrol from the tank and the smoke from burners comes out underneath the car at the front.

Re: Pre-Conditioning & the mystery of the Parking Heater

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 1:49 pm
by Cholsey
I had one on a V40 T4 I had back in 2000. I bought it tax free as an import from Sweden through an armed forces posting. The heater sounded like a jet engine as it started up. It was quite unreliable though and UK garages had no training on it.

Re: Pre-Conditioning & the mystery of the Parking Heater

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 2:44 pm
by pjm007
MichelR wrote: Tue May 22, 2018 1:21 pm Parking heater is a separate option you can order at least in my country.
Without it you can only hear up the car a bit with remote start.

But this will not completely heatup and desfrost the car I guess.
Therefore ordered my car with optioneel parking heater.

With parking heater you can also program it in the app like I like to have my car a certain temperature at say 6:00 in the morning. The heater starts up before that time and at 6:00 your car is nice and warm and defrosted. The parking heater burns you’re petrol from the tank and the smoke from burners comes out underneath the car at the front.

Its obviously never too cold in the UK as we have not been offered the option of a PH. The main XC40 brochure (even the brand new one) implies we can warm up our cars without doing a remote start, but we can’t. We also have the timer options in the app. They work as timers, but fail to start pre-condioned heating as there is no PH for them to start. They appear to work for pre-conditioned “cooling” in that you can also set a timer, but again it doesn't appear to work by starting the blowers. .

Re: Pre-Conditioning & the mystery of the Parking Heater

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 3:08 pm
by Shaenei
Check the cabin fuse box (under the front seats) fuse 7 is for the parking heater, if you've got a fuse in that slot then you'll have a parking heater.

Re: Pre-Conditioning & the mystery of the Parking Heater

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 3:25 pm
by deanio
Well if my car doesn’t come with a parking heater I’ll be complaining to customer services as they emailed me to say that they do come with a parking heater and rang my dealer to confirm the order number and stated that it had been ordered with one as it was an R Design Pro???

Re: Pre-Conditioning & the mystery of the Parking Heater

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 3:39 pm
by pjm007
Shaenei wrote: Tue May 22, 2018 3:08 pm Check the cabin fuse box (under the front seats) fuse 7 is for the parking heater, if you've got a fuse in that slot then you'll have a parking heater.

Thanks but - as posted in another thread (Dashcams) I can’t find a fuse box under the front seats. Can you be specific about exactly where it is, maybe with a pic? Thanks.

Re: Pre-Conditioning & the mystery of the Parking Heater

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 5:28 pm
by Shaenei
Don't have a car just just working from the disagrams and manual information. By the looks of it it should be under the driver's seat as that's what's pictured and can't find a RL picture of it, so beyond the manual info I can't help anymore then this sorry.

Re: Pre-Conditioning & the mystery of the Parking Heater

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 5:55 pm
by pjm007
Shaenei wrote: Tue May 22, 2018 5:28 pm Don't have a car just just working from the disagrams and manual information. By the looks of it it should be under the driver's seat as that's what's pictured and can't find a RL picture of it, so beyond the manual info I can't help anymore then this sorry.

Yes - as Boomer has also confirmed, the diagram isn’t helpful as it isn’t specific enough. My gut feel is there is no fuse box there and they have put it somewhere else!