On Monday, December 2, 2002, at 10:47 PM, Steve Firebaugh wrote:

> An hour later, when we were ready to go, the battery was dead. A push
> start was needed. Clearly the alternator at idle rate was not charging
> the battery while running the heaters (front and rear).

Three issues. First, your alternator is probably marginal and may need
replacing soon. Second, you were running it in near worse case scenario
(low rpms and high electrical usage, those fans use power.) Third, the
battery STILL shouldn't have been drained, unless it is getting close
to the end of its life cycle.

So is it normal for your battery to be dead at that point? No.
Surprising? Not really. You probably could have gotten in and run the
engine at higher rpms (aka 2000 rpms)  for a couple of minutes at the
end of the "warming cycle" and gotten away with it (as I have in the
past).