My house is full of oil filled heaters (image). Now I find it very difficult to remain heated unless I’m in direct contact with them. Granted, they heat the room, but not enough that I’m confortable. So as I’m typing this I have one between my legs just to get by. My GF has an halogen heater (image) which at 1 meter away and using roughly the same power seems to heat my legs a whole of a lot more. So I was considering bying one to bring home but my parents and sister swear by the fact that halogen heaters are hazardous to health because they somehow ‘burn the air’. Or something. This sounds like a myth to me.
So here are my 2 questions:
Are halogen heaters more efficient than oil filled ones?
Well, we just purchased a carbon filament heater that is absolutely the best heater I’ve ever used. It emits more radiation in the far infra-red spectrum, and heats up our living room in seconds. It only uses about 600 W as opposed to the 1500 or so standard on most others. It seems to heat more effectively than our other two heaters put together, and it feels more like the heat from a fireplace than an electric heater. It was relatively cheap, too.
In the interest of not appearing to shill for the manufacturer, and because I’m running late for a meeting, email me (see profile) and I’ll send you more complete info.
No, halogen heaters don’t ‘burn the air’ or anything. They are however somewhat more hazardous than oil filled heaters because they expose a much hotter surface to the environment. If you drape a blanket over an oil heater, it’s no big deal. If you do the same with a halogen tube or filament heater, you risk a fire.
Halogen heaters are great for heating things up fast, and concentrating heat in a particular part of a room, but their low heat capacity (thermal reservoir) makes them cycle more often than oil filled heaters. If they come with a crummy temperature control, as most heaters do, that cycling leads to wide swings in room temperature, and uneven temperature throughout the room.
As you’ve noticed, a little halogen heater is just the thing to warm up your under-desk space.
