Hi,
Does anyone know the major differences between the blue flame vs. infrared propane heaters. I know that with the blue flame you can see the flame and the infrared uses a ceramic block that heats up. Which one is better and why?
Thanks
Infrared heaters heat objects, not the air. If you are in direct line of sight, you will feel the warmth immediately. They are quiet, very efficient. Think of radiation of heat from the sun. You feel in more in the open than you do standing in the shade, so do the objects the heater is aiming at.
Flame heaters often can circulate air more if there is a booster fan. They can warm a larger area faster but at the sacrifice of the "line of sight".
I don't have experience with either one. I want a propane heater for my livingroom. The heater would supplement my oil fired furnace. I want something that would allow me to keep the house warm if there was an electricity outage. My livingroom is about 20 a 15 feet. Which type of propane heater would you suggest?
I'd look at something like this.
BTU's are what does the heating, BTU's/hour is how fast the heating occurs, and a BTU/hr is a BTU/hr. So for a given BTU/hr heater, the "area" is being heated at the same given rate. The rest can come down to perception.
I guess it may depend on what you mean by "a larger area." Do you mean just the air, or all the other objects in the room?
With the ceramic brick heater, the closer objects in the line-of-sight do indeed warm up faster than the air on the other side the room, but you feel the heat radiating from these warm objects and the air near them is also warmed by conduction, which could feel nice. A circulating fan can get that heated air moving to other parts of the room same as for the blue flame heater, by the way.
With the flame heater, the air gets warm first which may feel nice, but the air near to objects in the room will feel cold anyway because the objects absorb heat from the air as well as absorbing heat that you radiate, while not radiating heat back at you. So your perception of warmth is decreased by the chill that seems to come from the objects in the room.
So assume you come into a cold room and flip on the heater. One of them will feel warm wherever red light from the heater falls but farther away it can still feel cold for a while. With the other, you feel sort of a warm breeze but everything else about the room seems cold for a while. After the room has been warmed for a few hours, the differences are less noticeable, because the air and the objects reach a more even temperature.
So it depends a bit on where you will put the heater relative to where you will be in the room, what you prefer in terms of feeling warm in the early stages of the warmup, and how long the heater will be on.
%mod%
The radiant heater is a better choice if the work areas is say, 5 x 5 but the room is 50 x 50. You feel warmer as long as you are in sight of the heater. A bunch of people spread out over the entire area, to reach a fast level of comfort, will need a few radient heaters or one larger one that heats the air first.
You did a better job of explaining it. Ed
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.