Space Heater Nonsense

found some US home heating stats: 55% natural gas 25% electricity 11% fuel oil the rest is just "other" like maybe logs, wood pellets, solar hydronic etc.

nobody

It appears to me that heating in the USA is mostly done by using electricity rather than gas like in Germany. Or am I mistaken?

Tux1984

this is built in to some heaters, esp ones with digital controls

nobody

This is a great video!

Toygar Karadeniz

I can think of another very useful accessory for space heater use: an outlet timer that can take the wattage of a space heater. I have lamp timers but they're labeled for lamps only. I'd love to have a device I could plug in, push a button that says "1hr" and have it just run for that long. Like the heat lamp switch in the bathroom but on an outlet.

This video has irreversibly changed me for the rest of my life. I would have never ever thought of this?!?!

Tyler Kurth

unless the light escapes through a window, it turns into heat when it is absorbed by a surface. even the creaking noises and the motion of air from a fan turns into heat.

nobody

Just as an addition. My appartment building uses block heating, and I believe they use molten gold for heating, because one year I had used about 100 units (which should be barely ticking any marks, as the full use of a radiator in a day could easily surpass 30-50 units) and the bill I got back after a year was around 1500 euro, making electric space heaters actually a cheaper option.

Marcel de Jong

Dangit, I knew I should've looked a bit further when I went out to buy a new space heater. Oh well at least now I have one that's programmable, even though it's the first thing I can't figure out how that works, I feel like my parents with VCRs.

Marcel de Jong

Love the video. Very informative! When talking about the wasted energy of heaters and light bulbs, you mention heaters are 100% efficient. If you say that an incandescent light bulb wasted energy on heat, you should also mention the heaters waste energy on light energy (red glowing elements). Waste energy is just something we don't want the device to spend energy on to produce the end goal. Given the light from the elements is negligible, it's maybe 99.9% efficient.

Big Car

I remember you used to have a video or two about this on your old channel. What happened to them?

Wrenly Bewick

As a fellow Brit, I'm so ashamed... :-)

Big Car

In all honesty Alec, to truly define this as put to bed, it would be best to see these heaters in action based on thermal camera imaging, cause it’s not nesecarily the heaters maximum output but the efficiency of the transfer of heat from the heater into the room itself, some heaters are designed to be more efficient at heat transfer in specific size rooms. But it also depends on the impatience of the user, as I have come across lower powered units that will maintain the rooms heat but needs to be running all day long, but this in turn like you said is based on the rooms thermal efficiency. Plus if you put a watt hour meter on the plug of the heater you will find it is not running at 1500W all the time, you will find the power comsumption will vary and not doubt run lower in regular use.

Paul Fisher

I live in Europe and I have one that is 1000/2000 Watt, it looks exactly the same as the B&D one you have in your hands at 2:13. But the brand is different (here it is called 'Profile') and the logo is between the dials. The B&D Logo is replaced with a warning that you shouldn't put anything over the heater...

Hilarious! That article made my day, thanks!

Dr. Bjoern Bieber

if you just want more watts, you can get multiple space heaters, taking care to put them on different circuits. but 1500W is also kind of the point where you want to think about alternate solutions like better insulation and weatherstripping, upgraded windows/curtains, or adjusting the ductwork to flow heat more evenly through the house.

nobody

After trying many heaters over the years, convector heaters (like baseboard heaters in the US) tend to be the least effective. Most of the heat gets trapped towards the ceiling, particularly in rooms with high ceilings, whereas fan heaters get the seating level warmer quicker. My favourite is indeed an infrared heater. I bought a carbon heater at Argos which focuses the heat over roughly 2 seats wide from about 10 feet away. The 500W setting is plenty. The obvious drawback is that anyone sitting in any other seating position will barely feel the heat. It's certainly cheaper to run than our 2kW oil filled radiator, which we still use when we need to heat the whole room such as for guests.

Seán Byrne

I don't find any technical fault with this video, so you did great! - However, you should explain to people the huge difference in the parabolic infrared radiant heaters (I call them cat-heaters, because cats love them) - They are unique because they heat you or the cat, but not most other items, like your chair or keyboard or computer or clothing - oh, and they can telescope heat across the room, due to the parabolic design. The only real downside is that they are blindingly bright! So I employ oil heaters, ceramic (nothing beats the beefy built original Pelonis Saf-T-Furnace from 1988) and a parabolic "cat heater" depending on my mood and my needs at the time. PS - since the cat heater uses infrared, it may well be the safest heater design of them all! (Even the safety metal grating in front of the heating element stays cool) Also, the cat heaters only use around 750 watts max., so by heating just you, and not the items around you, you could call this "more efficient" and is a great choice if you are both cold and on a limited utility bill budget!

Bill Basch

I saw that in the edit, and I'm rather annoyed with myself for not pointing out that there was also an oscillating version of the same ceramic heater shown in this video, and it, too, was considered for a "small room". And trust me, there's no way that baseboard heater is moving more air than the fan-forced one. It's actually quite a powerful fan in that thing.

Technology Connections

While energy is energy is energy, I'm not sure all these applications are truly equal. The larger "medium room" heater at Menard's had an oscillating fan, rather than just a static fan. And the fanless "medium room" heater is bigger, lending itself to increased convection. None of that is to say that, given enough time, the heaters won't heat equally—or that there's not a boatload of marketing trickery at work—but I can see things like that affecting the perception of performance. I can imagine that there /are/ ways to more effectively distribute that heat, and that most manufacturers fail at implementing them. It's also probably worth noting that form factor is in play here. A "medium room" heater wouldn't really be appropriate in a small room, due to size constraints.

Kevin Kostka

Their use is probably more common in older homes where heat distribution is wildly inconsistent. I'd hesitate to say that they're an every-day item, but I'd also wager the majority of people have at least one. Another common place you see them is in workshops or garages, where central heat wasn't ever designed to accommodate. Certainly they're not "relied upon", rather they are used to supplement. Usually.

Technology Connections

Great video again, you hit the nail on the head (if that's correct English...), both about the nonsense of the room size, but also the difference that indeed exists between the different heaters. What I was wondering though, are those so commonly used in the US? Also if you have central heating? In the Netherlands, where I grew up, and in Switzerland, where I am living now, we actually would only use such things in holiday housing without central heating, so basically, not at home, since every room has usually central heating.

MrHammond

Lucky! I need to add a comment on the video that power figures are US-centric. It does make me curious if this phenomenon is seen in other countries, or if since you actually can have larger heaters, the room size ratings are actually tied to heat output.

Technology Connections

My favorite exaggerated example of this were the old Amish Miracle Heater ads: <a href="https://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/amish-miracle-heater-is-anything-but.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/amish-miracle-heater-is-anything-but.html</a>

Rufo Sanchez

Waste of time, the audience of this channel isn't as stupid as to require that on top of the very clear explanation... thankfully.

Kilrah

He mentioned that along with examples of where this was actually reversed, so... watch the video?

Kilrah

I wrote this comment on the YouTube comments section, but I figured I'd put it here also... Maybe they're categorizing the heaters' "room size" based on the amount of air the unit can move through itself in a given amount of time. A physically smaller heater simply cannot move as much air through it per minute as a physically larger heater can...

Laurence MacNeill

Oh, the glorious "Schmiedengloor" heaters. About 10 years ago, it seemed as if everyone I knew raved about how they were the best, most efficient heaters--some people actually went out and bought one! Well, at least they were getting 1500 watt's worth of heat out of them.

Mark Hesse

is that a ps2/ps1 memory card i spy at 10:00?

MrSonicOSG

That bi-metallic "thermostat": Seems like it serves as an additional on/off switch to me, as I'm able to click the machine on or off depending on the position of the dial. Doesn't really do much to control "temperature" in my space heaters.

Sam Blakey

Great video, It doesn't come across as a ranting YouTube video because this is so much more well-informed. 👍

Phil Sowers

Thanks again, your videos are great

Eris Alar

I have not yet had a chance to watch, but funny to see this in my email this morning. Yesterday at work, we had to have a huge automatic transfer switch in one of our datacenters rebuilt. They had to "recommssion" the datacenter which means disconnecting the main UPSes and running a test load through our ATS while they flip back &amp; forth between generator and commercial power. The test load was hauled in on a pallet and it's basically a giant hair dryer capable of pulling 400 amps.

Jason Wellband

Alec, that is spot on. You are totally correct. Go for it. An aside; here in the UK, we are all on 240v, so we can have 3kW heaters on a 13Amp ring main. (And long live the British Thermal Unit, too. :-)

Stephen Bell

Funny enough, this is exactly what happened to me when I began watching this video.

Alec, on a side note because I just noticed it again: You need some sort of intro or at least a couple seconds of wait in the beginning of your videos. Too often I have to skip back because I miss the first few words. Sometimes the volume is too low, headphones are not plugged yet etc. - help! :D

Markus Schumacher

To elaborate: I'm thinking that the "small room" heater may not withstand 100% duty cycle. In your explanation about electricity being inefficient way to heat a house you seem to forget about sources of electricity that isn't burning fossil fuel (mainly nuclear and hydro), in Norway for example most people use electricity as their main source of heat because hydro power is cheaper than fossil fuel. Next note is that an incandescent bulb can be seen as 100% efficient if the waste heat is not wasted, but used to heat the room. Oil filled stoves are known to create fires or even blow up when the thermostat stops working. Small fan heaters have a thermal fuse in case the fan stops (often a soldered spring that brakes the connection when the solder melts from the heat). There might be more. You're probably better off aiming for 99.9% correctness.

John Arild Lolland

You shouldn't be 0.01 uncertain, you are 100% correct as to the heating capacity.

Sam Yates

Duty cycle?

John Arild Lolland