This one makes me laugh every fall. The whole block heater thing.
The dealer says you don't need one. He is a moron. Every diesel needs one if it gets cold enough for your glow plugs to operate even a few times in a winter, imo. Because one night it will get really cold....and all your stuff will freeze up. And you will need your tractor for some mission from God. You want to be prepared, lol.
Anyway, weather anomolies happen everywhere from time to time.
I live in northern Alberta. It gets cold here. My glow plugs have only turned on twice in 1300hrs and 3 winters. I plug in my block heater. I run 0/40 oil in the winter. The first time the glowplugs came on was because I wanted to make sure they worked, so I left the tractor unplugged in mildly cold weather on purpose. The second time was a week ago for the same reason. I hadn't seen that light on the dash in about 1000hrs. Tractor still starts easily when it is mildly cold - check. Mildly cold is about 5 below freezing, so roughly 25 degrees or so for the metrically challenged.
It is just easier on the engine. These people who say that they don't need to plug in their vehicles because they start anyway make me laugh at their stupidity. Why make your motor suffer like that?Especially diesels. Popping and banging away. Why? If you can plug it in then PLUG IT IN.
My tractor spends hours and hours plugged in. Overnight many, many, many nights. That's how we do it in the GWN. This minimizes the amount of times we are forced to start cold engines over the life of the engine. Cold weather starts are HARD on things. Cold weather operations are HARD on things.
Anyway, rant over and I am glad you know the need for a block heater where the weather can get cold.