[frank2003]

Just curious. Am I burning more gas when I use my heater?

On these cold New Jersey mornings, I've been cycling the heat on and off thinking that I'll save gas by doing that. But I'm not sure.

 

[bmacz06]

No, you are not saving anything by turning off the heater except the little bit of juice that the fan uses. The engine generates plenty of free heat so you might as well use it.

 

[RinconVTR]

Just curious. Am I burning more gas when I use my heater?

On these cold New Jersey mornings, I've been cycling the heat on and off thinking that I'll save gas by doing that. But I'm not sure.

Nope. You wont save a penny.

In the spring and fall you could save a dime by selecting "no a/c" (forcing the compressor to stay off) on nice days, but even then its not a huge savings.

 

[papa's ody]

The only way to really know is to keep records.
I have kept a log of all gas purchases and post them to a spread sheet. Then you can watch the numbers to find out.

In my experience, as I loged the usage in my '91 Civic, early on I learned that I could get heat within minutes. However, the gas logs quickly showed a marked decrease in winter. Now there's more factors than just the heater, but I found that the idle would stay several hundred RPM's higher for much longer when I turned on the heat right away. Makes sense, I was taking the heat the engine needed to warm up. So it took much longer to get warmed up and reduce the idle.
The answer was to wait until normal operating temp was reached, then go ahead and use as much heat as you want.
Now this was on a 4 cyl Civic, the Ody is a bigger engine and heats up even faster. I still apply the same principle, let the engine warm up, then turn on the heat.

 

[Bigulp]

I believe that if you select the automatic climate control, the ac compressor runs. After you turn on your climate control in auto, pressing the AC button will turn the compressor off.

Unless you turn the AC off, this would use more fuel, because you are running the compressor.

Discovered this by accident, looking for the sourcce of water drips on the floor in the winter ......it was condensation from the AC running.

 

[Mahansm]

You will use more fuel by running the heater during engine warmup. Before the coolant gets to operating temperature the idle is advanced, the mixture is run richer than normal, and cylinder deactivation is disabled. By using heat you extend the time the engine spends below normal operating temp by a few minutes.

After the engine is up to normal coolant temperature the use of the heater will not affect mileage other than the very minor increase in electrical draw from the blower.

It's a choice between being warm sooner or saving about 10 cents worth of fuel.

 

[02tac]

Just curious. Am I burning more gas when I use my heater?

On these cold New Jersey mornings, I've been cycling the heat on and off thinking that I'll save gas by doing that. But I'm not sure.

A couple things to note;
1 - operation in colder weather uses more gas simply by the enrichment (same function as choke on a carb) needed to get things going when it is cold outside
2 - When using the defroster, the AC compressor runs. Most folks do not understand why the AC would be runnign in cold weather, but it does this to dehumidify the air to clear the windshield faster. Most vehicles have a low temp limit switch that prevents teh AC from comign on below a certian temperature. I do not know what temp this is for the Oddy.