Home Site | Choosing a Space Heater

Choosing a Space Heater

Space heaters can be a cost effective and environmentally safer alternative to traditional home heating. With several varieties on the market, it should not be difficult to find a heater that fits your needs. For temporary warmth, portable electric heaters work just fine. However if your searching for a more permanent solution to your heating needs, you should consider one of these many options.

 
The most cost effective option would have to be propane. Propane heaters come in several styles, forced air, convection, and radiant. They also come in permanently fixed or portable varieties. For real heating power of up to 200,000 BTU’s the portable radiant heater is a fireplace on wheels capable of heating an entire floor or garage. If convection is king, portable radiant heaters are the princes of heating. With a range of up to 100,000 BTU’s or more, radiant heaters have the power to heat smaller sized apartment.

 
If you only need to heat one room and choose propane to do it, you might want to choose a vent free wall mount heater. With a wide range of BTU outputs, you are sure to find the right sized wall mount for your needs. To heat up the workplace bring in the jet power of a forced air heater. Forced air heaters have the broadest range of sizes, capable of heating from 800, to 9,000 square feet of workspace. When using something as powerful as 400,000 BTU’s, be prepared to bring your wallet. These behemoths consume up to 200lbs of propane a day!

 
Infrared heaters use light waves below the wavelength of visible light to either heat an element or radiate its energy into the room. Large units have the capacity to heat up to 1000 square feet, large enough for an entire floor of your home. Electric infrared heaters are a safer and more cost effective alternative to traditional heating coil heaters. Heaters with electric heating coils have the capacity to burn carelessly placed objects around them, unintentionally starting fires. With up to 96% electricity to heat conversion efficiency, infrared heaters can be a cost effective and greener alternative to burning wood or fossil fuels.

 

There are other types of portable heat sources such as carosine, oil or gas fired units. Though these types of units can be safely used with the proper precautions, we will not recommend or elaborate on them in this write up since they can be very dangerous if not used properly. With that said, any portable heater can be a safety concern if not used properly so be sure to read your user’s manual thourougly and pay particluar attention to the caution sections.

If you are ready to start your search for the perfect space heater, some of the links on this site would be a great place to start.

Happy hunting :)

Filed Under space heaters | 3,873 Comments

Tagged With , , , ,

Comments

Comments are closed.