I have the same dog situation. I don't even want to stop them, they have so much fun running up and down the stairs to retrieve their toys. I also have that exact red Dirt Devil hand vac, but I never use it for stairs because it won't get NEAR the corners and edges. Not too great anywhere else either. The worst thing is I don't even have an outlet anywhere near the stairs. I actually tried sweeping them, yes, with a broom, and that worked OK. It's deep-pile carpet, so I had to sweep vigorously. This only makes them look clean, it doesn't suction any dirt out, but since the carpet is old and soon to be replaced, I don't care. It's a quick way to clean them up. Otherwise, I get an extension cord and use the attachment in my Miele canister, which is AWESOME. It gets deep into any crevice and grabs everything. It's the tool with little red felt lint-grabber strips.

In the old days --- uh-oh, there's the chronic old fart warning klaxon -- we used to heat the oven to warm (about 200F), shut it off, put in a bowl with a cup of ammonia, and leave it sit over-night. Then, toss the ammonia down the sink, and scrub the walls etc. with a scrubby and dish detergent. There were commercial (i.e., restaurant and institutional grade) oven cleaners but they were incredibly caustic and a big problem for anything that was not stainless steel. (Old fashioned Lutefisk might have smelled worse, but it was a pretty close call!) The instructions for my NXR say not to use "commerciaL" oven cleaners and I'm pretty sure (and have been told) that this means the actual "commercial" products not the residential grade stuff like Fume-free Easy Off, I've used the latter several times with no apparent ill effects (basically after the massive cooking marathons of Thanksgiving and Christmas). "No ill effects" means that I have not stripped the shine off the oven lining. As I understand it it, the warnings about not using "commercial" oven cleaners refer to the restaurant/insitutional grade products, not the "residential" products like Easy Off. (Do be aware, however, that some Easy-Off products are pretty d@*& strong. So, during your stove's warranty period, you want to use the "gentler" stuff like Fume Free rather than the Extra-Strength. What I do most of the time is a modified version of what Whirlpool calls "Acqua-lift."Basically, I get the oven very hot and let a bunch of water vapor in. (Typically, by putting a CI pan of water in the bottom of the oven when I'm baking bread.) Once the oven walls have cooled past the too-hot-to-touch stage, I scrub the walls using Dawn and blue scrubbie. That usually takes care of the problem. When it does not, I use the Fume Free Easy-Off. This post was edited by JWVideo on Fri, Apr 25, 14 at 23:48

I highly suggest before you attempt to take apart your oven to clean the inside of the glass that you review your owners manual. I had the same issue with my Whirlpool wall ovens and I thought how hard could it be to take apart and clean. Please note my ovens are over 20 years old. I was able to remove the door and get to the inner glass pane but I failed to realize that the inner and outer glass panes are sealed and once the seal is broken its near impossible for a lay person to put back together. Well long story short I am now in the process of replacing my double ovens. According to my Appliance Guy some ovens cannot be opened to clean the inner glass panes. His resolution was for any future oven call in for service and let them replace the glass. If I had only known!!! But again the ovens were 20 years old and really needed to be replaced, but if I was thinking I would have waited until after Thanksgiving!

The main question is when can you get it in and get it fixed? Probably would take less time than looking for alternative methods. My concern is at 19°, yes it's cold, but your breath in there, especially multiple bodies would likely start fogging/frosting up the windows and that's dangerous. Years ago I used to put a small electric heater in the cab of my one pickup that had a less than stellar heater to help warm it up a few minutes before I'd leave. A friend works in the mines and they did the same thing on their vehicles, especially the big heavy rigs. Would help a lot. Somewhere around here I have one or two of the 12v heaters that plug into the lighter. Thought they'd be handy for when I had passengers in the back seats of vehicles but I don't think I ever actually tried them out. But again, I think the vehicle heater/defroster is far preferable. What broke that rendered it totally useless? If the fan died, it should still produce heat. If it's leaking it should still work. I don't understand what's wrong that would totally incapacitate it. A bad fan switch could be bypassed to leave it going all the time and just adjust temperature. Here is a link that might be useful: Example of something similar to what I had