Space Heater Nonsense

I'd argue the cheap ones are better at heating since they're more likely to start a fire.

My advice is buy an Xbox and a 32" tv . My son's room is 10 degrees warmer than any other room in the house ! 😃

Last spring when my heat went out, I did find one compelling reason to buy the more expensive "fancy" heaters.... It's all the store had left

Id argue the oil heater wins a few points for the popping sounds it makes as it heats up. Very comfy.

Reminds me of the old proverb: "Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

I love the ads "uses only as much energy as your coffee maker" meanwhile...your coffee maker uses 1500 watts. You just don't have it on all day.

I recently installed a 97% efficient gas furnace in my house and when I heard that the price of natural gas was going to go up by a lot in December I also installed a set back timed thermostat to turn it down at night. I kept the thermostat set fairly low both day and night trying to keep the bill down. What I didn't know is that two of my roommates had electric heaters going all day and night in their rooms...at the end of the month I got the energy bill and it was insanely higher than it had ever been before. I know that electricity is the most expensive way to heat anything. At the beginning of January we had a meeting and we agreed that I would turn up the furnace thermostat to a much warmer comfortable temperature if they would unplug their electric heaters and stop using them altogether. I just got my energy bill (gas and electricity combined) for January and the bill was exactly HALF as much as December's bill. I knew that it would probably be lower but I never expected it to be THAT much lower. Lesson learned.

I remember the old gas space heaters. My great grandmother had one with five or six fire bricks that on one surface had a "forest" of tiny evenly spaced cone shaped projections. The heater was across from the foot of a bed. Those projections at the bottom closest to the flame when hot would glow a shimmering pumpkin orange color. I remember on cold, quite winter nights staring into the fire box watching the cones change different shades or orange up and down the column of little cones, rarely reaching the top rows of cones. The "hissing" sound of the gas coming out of the gas jets, occasionally a "spark" would come flying out of the flames (i always imagined it was a bug of some kind that had gotten to close to the flame). Sometimes in the background a cold wind could be heard be whistling though the poorly fitting windows. Hypnotized by this I would eventually fall asleep and awaken to the smell of bacon, fresh biscuits and "breakfast is ready".

Makes perfect sense that the smaller heater is meant for a small room, even if it's higher power, because if your room is really small, the medium heater won't fit inside it.

Many moons ago I worked at IBM. They had a rule against space heaters. But they had a lot of obsolete computers stored. So if you were cold, you just went and got a computer or two, stuck them under your desk, and turned them on. They were only maybe 500 watts each, but it would warm up the space under your desk.

As a person that's lived in very cold climates in motorhomes and trailers I've tried everything. For electric heaters the radiator style oil heaters definitely work better for keeping an area at a constant temp.. but none of them compare to a good woodstove.

I love that you point out that the fan actually adds all its consumed power to the room as heat. I've always tried to point that out to people when they think that a fan "cools a room off" no, you're adding 20 watts of heat to the room, you're just assisting evaporative cooling and preventing warm air from your body heat from accumulating around your body by being in a breeze, but the room air will get warmer by adding fans.

If I manufactured 1,500-watt space heaters I'd market them as 2 horsepower.

The bigger the heater is, the more space in the room it takes and thus the less space in the room it has to warm. Yes, call me big brain.

We bought a space heater at a local store in Australia. The 2nd time we turned it on it went bang, lots of smoke and it tripped the fuse box. Took it back to the store and they said they had an exchange only policy so we got a new one. This one lasted three days before it blew up and shut down the fuse box. We took it back as well and finally, after a LOT of arguing, got our money back and went elsewhere. It's not just how much heat they give out, it's how safe they are.

In Australia, with 240v available in the house, we see 2,000w space heaters sold as medium sized room heater. Smaller room heaters may be rated at higher wattage, however their electrical design usually does not allow longer running at full capacity. Fast initial heating followed by thermostat limited heating.

Haha my $10 space heater from Walmart has worked great for the past 4 years. Good on you for pointing out this bogus marketing.

Years ago, I was heating two bathrooms, one with a waffle iron, the other with a pop corn popper, both with the 1500 watt heating elements exposed.

Duty-cycle it all comes down to this. I had a small black plastic heater in the bathroom as a kid and it did well for years, after my dads kerocene heater died he took it to use it in the basement computer room. It was then trying to heat half the basement, never turned off, melted and blew black smoke all over as it burnt.