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#3223738 28-Apr-2024 16:53

tweake:

yes/no. there is limits on max temp output to stop that happening. plus they tend to melt before they catch fire. also it means the person is using the wrong type of heater. for kids rooms use an oil heater, as thats low temp. then there is behavior, "don't sit in front of the fire". you learn as kids it hurts when sparks burn a hole in your clothes.

Is there? they have thermal cutoffs in them but it takes a while for the heat to get back to them to actually kick in.

When you have little to no money, you don't really have choice in what heater you use. a $20 electric fan heater will keep you warm as would a $50 oil column heater. but the $20 heater has 2x the output of the oil heater, is quicker to heat the area so thats what people get.

tweake

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#3223739 28-Apr-2024 16:56

gzt: Similar to electric oven temperature but for some reason some people throw that knowledge out the window when operating an oil fin heater or similar. I'm not sure why. It's a mystery. Maybe if dials were graded in degrees those people would make the connection.

Edit: Maybe related to the old bar heaters with the high/low choice and they think the stat is a continuously variable control? beats me..

i forgot about that. grand parents had a radiant heater with low/med/high etc but no thermostat. not that it could ever get the room up to temp. you had to sit in front of it for any heat.

tweake

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#3223740 28-Apr-2024 17:05

Jase2985:

Is there? they have thermal cutoffs in them but it takes a while for the heat to get back to them to actually kick in.

When you have little to no money, you don't really have choice in what heater you use. a $20 electric fan heater will keep you warm as would a $50 oil column heater. but the $20 heater has 2x the output of the oil heater, is quicker to heat the area so thats what people get.

as per the recent recall, there is standards on how hot the air can be coming out of fan heaters. all heaters have thermal overloads should it be covered by a blanket etc (i used to replace a lot of them). these days they also have tilt switches in case they get knocked over.

oil heaters can have the same output of the fan heaters or radiant heaters. however fan heaters are dirt cheap in comparison.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3223804 28-Apr-2024 19:18

tweake:

SomeoneSomewhere:

Electric heaters when operating normally can provide an ignition source. This is why the saying 'stay a meter from the heater' exists. The radiant heat is enough to provide ignition on its own, even without contact.

The issue with flammable childrens' clothes is not really if the kid gets caught in a house fire. It's the clothing being the first thing to catch fire, because the kid is huddled up next to a heater.

yes/no. there is limits on max temp output to stop that happening. plus they tend to melt before they catch fire. also it means the person is using the wrong type of heater. for kids rooms use an oil heater, as thats low temp. then there is behavior, "don't sit in front of the fire". you learn as kids it hurts when sparks burn a hole in your clothes.

not to mention the whole, why are you using resistive heaters in the first place. most places where heated by wood/coal/oil burners. electric heaters never had enough output to heat rooms, and still don't. a change in tech with little understanding, something thats still a problem to day. (many people still can't understand how thermostats work)

An enclosed fire won't produce sparks, but is still hot enough to melt/burn clothing if you're too close.

Insufficient heat is what leads people to cluster too close to the heater. Sure, we'd like everyone to have houses that are evenly heated to 22C with no hot or cold spots, but that's not universal. If heating is provided electrically or by an insufficient (house not yet warm) wood/coal burner, then it's all but guaranteed that cold people will gravitate towards that heat.

It's a defence in depth thing: we try to fix both the heating, and the clothing.

Oil heaters also don't provide the fast-start capability of fan or radiant heaters: you get home and it's cold, you turn it on, you sit in front of it.

tweake

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#3223805 28-Apr-2024 19:39

SomeoneSomewhere:

It's a defence in depth thing: we try to fix both the heating, and the clothing.

exactly, yet the answer they choose, and still to today, is to pour untested chems into products instead.

MadEngineer

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#3223808 28-Apr-2024 20:11

gzt: Similar to electric oven temperature but for some reason some people throw that knowledge out the window when operating an oil fin heater or similar. I'm not sure why. It's a mystery. Maybe if dials were graded in degrees those people would make the connection.

Edit: Maybe related to the old bar heaters with the high/low choice and they think the stat is a continuously variable control? beats me..

Heat pumps have that - setting it to 20 deg c isn't enough. They'll set it to 25 so that it ramps up the hysteresis then complain the thing uses too much power, gets too hot and requires constant temperature adjustments.

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

tweake

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#3223813 28-Apr-2024 21:13

MadEngineer:

gzt: Similar to electric oven temperature but for some reason some people throw that knowledge out the window when operating an oil fin heater or similar. I'm not sure why. It's a mystery. Maybe if dials were graded in degrees those people would make the connection.

Edit: Maybe related to the old bar heaters with the high/low choice and they think the stat is a continuously variable control? beats me..
Heat pumps have that - setting it to 20 deg c isn't enough. They'll set it to 25 so that it ramps up the hysteresis then complain the thing uses too much power, gets too hot and requires constant temperature adjustments.

yeah its the old "set it to 30 because that will make it heat up quicker".

neb

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#3223822 28-Apr-2024 21:44

Anyone have some self-adhesive polished-metal letters that spell out "Mother"?

No, no reason, just asking.

neb

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#3223825 28-Apr-2024 21:54

tweake: yeah its the old "set it to 30 because that will make it heat up quicker".

There's decades of research around this, or more generally mental models of heating devices. Google "mental models heating" if you want way too much detail. From memory that one is called the valve model and is based on the thinking that a bigger fire heats things up quicker, thus you open the valve to maximum to get the house warm quicker.

neb

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#3223826 28-Apr-2024 21:57

tweake: someone died not long back, traced it back to a worn electric blanket. they are meant to be checked regularly (something i did a lot of back in the day).

The stats around electric blanket fires are that ninety-something percent are caused by ones ten or more years old. To deal with this, get the cheap $15-20 Warehouse ones and toss them after 5-7 years, whenever they're looking a bit worn.

(You may optionally feel slightly guilty about the waste being produced, but a house fire produces a lot more waste).

deepred

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#3223828 28-Apr-2024 22:12

neb:

Anyone have some self-adhesive polished-metal letters that spell out "Mother"?

No, no reason, just asking.

And it's not even the weirdest car name either.

YouTube: Driving in New Zealand and the strange cars there

"I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce." — J. Edgar Hoover

"Create a society that values material things above all else. Strip it of industry. Raise taxes for the poor and reduce them for the rich and for corporations. Prop up failed financial institutions with public money. Ask for more tax, while vastly reducing public services. Put adverts everywhere, regardless of people's ability to afford the things they advertise. Allow the cost of food and housing to eclipse people's ability to pay for them. Light blue touch paper." — Andrew Maxwell

richms

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#3223830 28-Apr-2024 22:16

neb:

Anyone have some self-adhesive polished-metal letters that spell out "Mother"?

No, no reason, just asking.

I have seen them at $2 shops in the past on a stand by the counter. Look really bad on a car as the font just looks "off" in some way. But then again, that would be right at home on the pictured car.

Richard rich.ms

Geektastic

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#3223872 29-Apr-2024 08:25

“New Zealanders would have to wait another eight years for 6G to be available, around 2032, he said.”

6G?! We live 30 minutes from Christchurch and have intermittent 4G, data incapable 3G more often and not a shred of 5G until you get to the city itself.

6G my eye!

freitasm

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#3223879 29-Apr-2024 08:46

And here we are thinking the Y2K bug was fixed about 25 years ago: ‘They thought I was a child’: US airline repeatedly registers 101-year-old as baby | Air transport | The Guardian

A 101-year-old woman has been regularly mistaken for an infant because an airline’s booking system was unable to compute her date of birth.

The woman, named only as Patricia, was born in 1922, but the American Airlines system apparently does not recognise that year, defaulting instead to 2022, the BBC reported.

geoffwnz

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#3223903 29-Apr-2024 09:08

freitasm:

And here we are thinking the Y2K bug was fixed about 25 years ago: ‘They thought I was a child’: US airline repeatedly registers 101-year-old as baby | Air transport | The Guardian

A 101-year-old woman has been regularly mistaken for an infant because an airline’s booking system was unable to compute her date of birth.

The woman, named only as Patricia, was born in 1922, but the American Airlines system apparently does not recognise that year, defaulting instead to 2022, the BBC reported.

Ahh, DoB validation. Fun times. That tricky line between valid and keying errors. Statistically, it's more likely that 1922 is a keying error but still definitely possible to be valid.

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