I just bought a $20 space heater from Wal Mart. It has a 900W setting and a 1500W setting. It does a pretty good job heating the room. The problem is that the built in thermostat lets the room get too cool before it turns on and too hot before it turns off.
Anyone want to recommend one that has better temperature control?
Hi Terry
This might fill the bill:
Cheers, Paul
IMHO:
You noticed the problem having the thermistat so close to the heat source. There are some plug in types of thermostats, however you might want to seriously look into another way to heat, or conserve heat. Is this your home?
tom @
Yes it is my home. I have central heat/air, but I keep it around 66. Because my computer is in my bed room I just keep that room a little warmer than the rest of the house. It is just me.
You need a bigger computer ; ) mine heat the room, I keep it cooler in this room for that reason.
Do you work for NASA? If not, why do you want to heat SPACE? Is this to make it easier to do space travel or what?
hey, we've got the same heater... It's a lakewood radiant heater in my case, and it was $30 last year...but I love it.
Here's the thing that i figured out... radiant heaters take a LONG time to heat up anything because it's gotta heat all that oil up inside and there has to be thermal conductivity..blah blah blah... it just takes a bit. Then, get this, after the thermostat kicks off, you're stuck with all this hot oil heating up the air even further. I like it, it's an efficient process.
What I did to kinda mellow out the spikes in temperature was buy a $5 timer at walmart. It's got tabs that look like a package of birth control pills... just knock out every other tab so it only runs half the time (every other 30 minute cycle)...then kick the thermostat up a bit so it will run.
Now, you've got a heater that takes just long enough to heat up your room about 5 degrees before it kicks off, and it takes my old house loses about 8 degrees per hour on a really cold night (like 15 degrees).
In the summer you can use the timer to run a fan to keep the place from getting stale while you're at work, or to run lights while you're on vacation.
All electric heaters are 100% efficient. They are also expensive to run in most places. Our electric rates (Connecticut) just went up to 18.5¢ per kW hour so to run a 1500 watt heater for one hour costs 23¢. For the cost of heating one room with electric, I can heat most of my house with oil. For
100,000 Btru of electric I'd pay 4.88 but for oil I'd only pay 1.86.Sorry, I misspoke. I meant efficiency as in there's no fan, air circulates by the whole "hot air rises, cold sinks" idea.
You're right about Electric costing more. In the case of a bachelor though, where you spend the majority of your time in one room, like a bedroom to sleep, a radiant heater makes good sense.
I set my heater down to about 60 this time of year. 58 when I'm at work, 63 when I get home, 60 to sleep. My gas/electric bills total about $150/month together (they're about $75 each) for a 1600 square foot house (no basement).
Jason Kelly Valley Center, KS
Ha ha ha. I understand. I have my computer in the basement, unheated. I bought a heating pad, that I put on the floor and heat my feet. One tiny heating pad keeps me warm. When I have back problems, from being at the computer too much, I use it on my back.
I have one that auto shuts off after a time, since I'm safety paranoid. ;)
If you have the cash, might want to look into zoning, or maybe even having a real electric heater installed. Something that is designed to keep the room warmer than the rest of the house.
tom
Same size here in CT. Electric bill came yesterday for $149.14. From what I can see of the oil tank that was filled in December, we've use about 80 -
90 gallons or about $200. This was a warm year also!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.