Which heater - Oil V Panel Heater

[cbennie]

Hi.

now I know on paper that panel heaters such as the econo-heat panel are much less wattage than a large oil heater ie - 425 Watt V 2400 Watt.....but here's the thing.

I have a Delonghi 2400W oil heater. It has a 6 setting dial and switch for Hi and Low. In my sons 5x5m bedroom - weatherboard house, 12 foot ceilings, South facing room (ie....cold!) I can turn the dial up to 6 on the low setting for 30 minutes and heat the room. I can then turn it down to 1 or 2 and keep the room warm all night. The heater has a thermostat so it cuts in and out.

I don't exactly know how the whole Wattage thing works but I assume 2400W is when the heater is turned up to 6 on High? IF this is the case then as there is 12 possible settings on the heater, this would mean 2400 divided by 12 which means if I am able to run the oil heater on the Low switch and 1 to 2 on the dial then it is only using around 200-400 Watts at the most? Am I completely wrong?

If this is the case would this not be more economical than a panel heater which in the case of the largest econo-heat panel is 425Watts - a device that does not have thermostat and therefore runs at 425 Watts continously where as my oil heater - is only using 200-400 Watts will also be cutting out (and in) throughout the night - therefore not running at this constant wattage and therefore cheaper to run?

I would love someone to shed some light on this - I need to buy another heat source ASAP for another room and I'm not sure which way to go......also keeping in mind that the largest econ-heat panel MAY struggle to heat a space this large.........

thanks in advance

Chris

[dazzler]

What about electric blankets and doona's

[cbennie]

To be honest - comments like that aren't really that helpful - it doesn't address my question(s). If you must know - I have a 3 year old and a new born baby. I live in the Adelaide Hills and our rooms can drop to below 11 degrees. It is not feasable for me to wrap a new born in a doona and the recommended temp. for a newborn is 16-18 degrees. My 3 year old is asthmatic and all the doonas and blankets in the world are not going to stop him intaking cold air which will settle in his lungs and potentially onset and asthma attack.

I am trying to meet the needs of my children whilst also the needs of the planet by being as energy efficinet as possible.

So please - helpful replies......

[johnc]

Neither heater will run continously unless it is really really cold. We used an oil filled heater when the kids where small but anything above setting one slugged the power bill. Last year we put a small nobo heater in daughters (teenager) room and set it on 16, the effect on the powerbill is not noticable, the house does have ducted central heating so the Nobo probably doesn't kick in until well after midnight but keepd the chill off during the day. The room never gets that chilly feel it used to in winter and seems to keep a nice ambinet temperature. This year I shoved one into the shed it will be interesting to see what it does, the shed is well insulated and also just has the edge off the cold now of an evening.

cheers, John.

[totoblue]

Choice magazine tests always say that heaters with fans do a better job of consistently warming the room. Non-fan heaters may put out the same heat but the heat is not evenly distributed so you feel colder.

Efficiency - they all put out the same heat. The electricity can only come out as heat, noise, light or wear on the bearings etc. All of those are minute except for the heat output. Therefore the differences are the distribution of heat, the noise of the fan, the quality, features and guarantees.

We've got a couple of electric oil-filled column heaters; one is 2400w which we've used in the lounge recently as our central heating is out of order.

We recently went and bought a couple of fan heaters as the 2400w oil filled column heater is not capable of heating our modestly sized lounge room (4.5x5.5m). We bought an IXL Nipper which is a 2400w fan heater which does a much much better job at heating the lounge room. Also the oil filled column heaters get quite hot compared to fan heaters, and because the heat distribution of an oil heater is so poor, you are tempted to get really close to it and that could burn a child.

The IXL Nipper was $169 is Australian made, made of white Colourbond steel and looks pretty solid. It has an uncalibrated thermostat and on-off switch. The thermostat doesn't turn the fan on or off, and the thermostat won't turn the heat below 750W, so we need to turn it on and off by hand as it does get too hot otherwise. Hence I'm not sure that it would be good to leave on all night in a bedroom. It has a 2yr guarantee. Overall looks pretty solidly made. Can be wall mounted - but comes with feet attached out of the box.

We also bought a Sunbeam 1800w ceramic heater for $89 for the bathroom and for other small rooms. It oscillates (a gimmick IMHO), and has a thermostat with digital display for setting temperature and showing room temperature. It has a knob for setting the temperature. Seems quite good. The thermostat turns the fan and heat right off, so it is probably better for a bedroom than the IXL. Plastic cabinet. 2 yr guarantee. Probably has more bits to fail than the IXL (e.g. the electronics and the display). Beeps when you press the buttons so that might attract children to play with it.

My wife went to several shops and was confused by the whole thing. Sales staff were not much help and kept trying to sell her expensive panel heaters without fans (one was French with a 7 year guarantee, and the other was Nobo IIRC as mentioned by someone else). I then went with her to two stores and we ended up a Harvey Norman where we tried out about 20 different models. Staff at the first store kept plugging those panel heaters and trying to tell me that they didn't need a fan, but the demonstration didn't convince me. I couldn't see any benefit from buying the $300+ Sunbeam over the $89 one we bought except 600 more watts. There are slightly cheaper Sunbeam models than the one we got but they set the temperature with buttons and I preferred the knob. There is a physically larger IXL model than the one we got but it has the same power and is twice the price so there is no benefit I could see.

We tried to buy the $100 fan/panel heater that Choice recommended in the Jun 07 issue, but we couldn't find it anywhere.

The best electric heater we ever had was a small fan heater with a ceramic element and a quiet fan. It used to adjust the fan speed as well as the heat so that once the room warmed up the fan was almost silent. It was about $250 approx 8 years ago, but it's broken and the serviceman can't get parts. It was called a Microfurnace and was 2000w - don't remember the brand (it was European IIRC), but we went to try and buy one recently and the shop doesn't sell them but apparently Sunbeam took over that company, so they sell Sunbeam ones (which they say are quite similar). Not in my opinion, as we tried them out at Harvey Norman. Noisier, looked cheaply made, worse controls, same price. Another thing is that the expensive Sunbeams have some kind of overload thingy inside them that trips, and is not replaceable. i.e. the unit cannot be repaired if it trips.

[totoblue]

The Choice recommended heater in the June 07 convection heater test was the Dimplex 3088T for $100.

[Mcblurter]

We have two kids 3 and 1. We recently got ducted gas but before this we used a Pelco Electric Company Microfurnace (from Greece) which were expensive to buy but effecient to run. Ours has a thermostat dial so we would set it for around 16 degrees and leave it on. When it got to the temp it would virtually stop the fan and the heat. It also had a safety switch so if it was knocked over it would cut out. They are only small, about the size of a dinner plate about 10cm deep. the front gets hot so wouldn't want the kids crawling around it. Also has a dust filter at the back (a piece of foam) so helps not speading dust around, easy to clean. When my 3 year old was starting to crawl he used to have great fun pulling these out, every day!! We told everyone it was his job, he always looked so satisfied once he had removed them. Can't even remember where we got them from. Maybe try the internet. If you are interested we might be able to do a deal on a second hand one!! Although probably worth checking out the cheaper versions.
We also used a small oil heater with thermostat in another room, half size not a full radiator, that also worked well and no fan to disturb dust etc. I don't think our fuel bills increased that much, hard to tell as more boiling water, more use of hot water, sterilizers, night lights, monitors, washing clothes and dishes, vacuuming, lights, TV (for those nights they just don't sleep), cooking, microwave, refridgerator etc etc I'm sure if we all had the choice we would live in sustainable housing but we don't all get that choice. So whatever power you use know you can make up for later. Our kids are very water conscious (they know the wee button and poo button) and learning to be power conscious and when we can change something we do, but that is very hard when they are babies.
Good luck with the kids! We find we conserve energy a lot by all sleeping together (NOT BY CHOICE!!), although our individual energy levels get drained quickly!!
Cheers
McBlurter

[NCArcher]

I don't exactly know how the whole Wattage thing works but I assume 2400W is when the heater is turned up to 6 on High? IF this is the case then as there is 12 possible settings on the heater, this would mean 2400 divided by 12 which means if I am able to run the oil heater on the Low switch and 1 to 2 on the dial then it is only using around 200-400 Watts at the most? Am I completely wrong?

Hi Chris,
Hope this helps.
With a High/Low switch the heater probably contains two seperate elements of 1200W each. High=both on, Low=one on.
The dial with the 1-6 is a thermostat that turns the heater on and off when the air temperature reaches as value that corresponds with the thermostat setting. The thermostats on these heaters is pretty basic and would have a temperature range of 10 deg (just a guess). If the T/Stat is calibrated from 20-30 deg then switching the heater to high and 6 would turn both elements on until the temp reached 30 deg. The heater would then turn off until the temperature dropped by 2-3 deg. With the switch set to low only one element would be turned on so less power consumed but it would take a lot longer to heat the room to the turn off temperature.

Tony

[dazzler]

To be honest - comments like that aren't really that helpful - it doesn't address my question(s). If you must know - I have a 3 year old and a new born baby. I live in the Adelaide Hills and our rooms can drop to below 11 degrees. It is not feasable for me to wrap a new born in a doona and the recommended temp. for a newborn is 16-18 degrees. My 3 year old is asthmatic and all the doonas and blankets in the world are not going to stop him intaking cold air which will settle in his lungs and potentially onset and asthma attack.

I am trying to meet the needs of my children whilst also the needs of the planet by being as energy efficinet as possible.

So please - helpful replies......

Well maybe you should have said that in the first place.

Oh thats right, we are supposed to be mind readers.

Your thread asks about "keeping a room warm all night" and doesnt mention a baby or a 3 yo with asthma. So without that information trying to keep it warm all night (all 60 square metres) when u are only taking up 2 square metres of space yourself is a waste of money and heat.

My comments were meant to be helpful. My children grew up in canberra, where -7degrees is the norm in July, and we survived quite fine with electric blankets and doonas. Hence my comments that were meant to HELP! as its almost impossible to keep a large inefficiently insulated room warm all night without using heaps of power no matter what method you use.

So how about YOU help us out by giving all the information in your first post so that WE can help YOU in the first place!.

Or even better;

"Thanks dazzler. Unfortunately my son has asthma and we have a new baby so that wouldnt work. Thanks for taking the time to reply anyway."


.

[totoblue]

With the switch set to low only one element would be turned on so less power consumed but it would take a lot longer to heat the room to the turn off temperature.

Your electricity bill charges by kilowatt hours, and kilowatt hours is what causes green house gases. That's kilowatts multiplied by hours. A 1200w element on for 2 hours costs as much as a 2400w element on for 1 hour. So if there is a thermostat maintaining a specific temperature, it doesn't matter if the element is using 2400 watts or 1200 watts. If a 2400w element runs 25% of the time to achieve a certain temperature, then a 1200w element will run 50% of the time to achieve the same temperature, and will cost the same to run for an hour.

However, you may prefer to select an element that means a fan heater runs most of the time, so that it is producing a constant flow of warm air rather than turning on and off. This is a similar concept to an inverter air conditioner matching the power used to the temperature so that you get an even flow of air at the desired temperature.

Some heaters such as the IXL Nipper I referred to above, use a base amount of electricity all the time (750 watts for the Nipper).

BTW the Sunbeam HE2100 ceramic fan heater I referred to above is now completely dead. It'll be going back to the dealer any day now.