What's good for portable home heating/space heating?

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Lizard1977

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#296184 28-May-2022 11:08

Now that the cold weather has finally arrived here in Palmy, I'm discovering exactly how warm (or cold) my new house is. It's a 1960s ex state house with insulation in floor and ceiling, and about 80% double glazed. There's one source of heating - a heat pump in the lounge - but it doesn't do much for the kitchen, the hallway or the bedrooms. For the short term, while I work out a more long term solution (maybe a ducted heat pump or similar) I was going to get a couple of space heaters. None of the rooms are larger than 18m2, so I was looking at 1500-2000W oil column heaters which I've found to be good in the past. But what about things like the Goldair panel heaters for the hallway? They're just 425W but they're relatively unobtrusive so won't get in the way in the hall.

All suggestions welcome.

timmmay

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#2919675 28-May-2022 11:34

Fan heaters with directed air can be quite effective. Oil or panel heaters send heat straight up so they take a long time to heat up a room and have to be left on for quite a while to be useful.

If you are considering ducted heating have a read of my thread about ducted heating.

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richms

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#2919688 28-May-2022 14:04

Micathermic heaters pointing at you is the best if you don't want to heat the whole space I find inside because you get a good amount of radiant heat, but it also convects and does a lot of air heating, its not slow to get going like an oil filled heater, and its not making a glow like a normal radiant heater.

I have an old shacklock conray that I use in the shed, I will replace it when it dies but that hasn't happened yet. Radiant means it heats you and not the air, but you have a hot side and a cold side as a result.

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lxsw20

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#2919841 28-May-2022 21:38

As others have said it depends on how you intend to use the heaters.

For a bedroom I tend to use a fan heater, as it's quick to get the room warm, and I don't care if it's cold when I'm not in there. If its a babys room or something, then something like an oil column heater is probably the way to go.

Unless you've got money to burn I wouldn't bother heating a hallway.

raytaylor

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#2919849 28-May-2022 22:10

Unless its a heat pump, all other electric heaters are only going to be 100% efficient.

That means if something is a lower wattage, your not going to save power - its just going to have to run for longer to produce the same amount of heat at the same cost.

Before I got a heat pump in the bedroom, i had an 5 column 1200 watt oil heater. It takes about 15 minutes to heat the room in the morning, but its silent so it could come on about half an hour before my alarm goes off. I still use it in winter because its quiet where as the heat pump is too noisy so thats mainly for cooling in summer.

A fan heater could heat the room in 5 minutes but its very loud.

A radiant heater is better for bigger spaces where you dont want to heat the air but you do want to heat your body - its light that when it hits an object, it gets absorbed and turned to heat. Heat may then transfer from that object into the air. Like feeling the warmth of the sun on a cold day.

A wall mounted panel heater is like a low powered oil heater, but more expensive to buy initially yet suitable for kids bedrooms because they arent as hot to touch so less likely to burn.

Personally I think an oil heater is the best option.
A room looses heat at a constant rate so as long as your heater can produce more heat than the room looses through the walls/windows etc then no matter what heater you choose it will cost the same to run as any other, unless its a heat pump which is 300-400% efficient and the one I recommend.

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Scott3

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#2919881 28-May-2022 23:11

As mentioned above, all electric resistance heaters are 100% efficient, so the only difference come down to power, how they distribute the heat & how they are controlled.

As such for most people, a fairly cheap basic heater will do fine.

We have a fan heater in the office because it is cheap and what my spouse prefers. Manual control. Fan noise means we don't forget it being on. spouse likes white noise.

We used to have an oil heater in the bedroom, with a plug in thermostat stacked to a plug in timer (I was only running it at half power, cira 500W, so wasn't concerned about the stacking). Worked well. was set so at night, the heater would kick in below the set point (I forget what we ran, but cira 18 - 20 C). Issue with oil heater built in thermostats is that they get feedback from the heater itself, and become near useless.

Those low wattage wall mounted heater's are about taking the edge of the cold, essentially under heating the space at cold times which obviously costs a lot less in power than heating properly.

Regarding the property, hope you have fairly cheap power. If the walls are not insulated, or it is drafty, the costs of heating with resistance electric may well be excessive. In which case the obvious next step is to just spot heat where you need. I.e. heater in the bedroom, but ignore the hallway, bathroom, kitchen.

Above is kinda hard to say, but housing of this era often took a 20 - 30kW fire place to heat, (heat from a fire flows better around a house than heat pump heat due to much hotter hot air generated). Not realistic to provide this amount of heat by plug in electric heaters.

timmmay

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#2919903 29-May-2022 09:24

Ducted heated is quiet if done properly. Our first one had a loud outdoor unit, loud indoor / roof unit, and loud diffusers, we had it removed. The newer Daikin is quieter outside (still not quiet exactly but quiet mode at night is ok), virtually silent indoor / roof unit, and the air passing through the diffusers is silent on low, quiet on medium, and makes a bit of a noise if it's on high. The install quality makes a BIG difference to the indoor unit and even more to the diffuser noise, straight ducting runs and no sharp bends particularly near the diffusers makes a big difference.