My parents are thinking about getting a heater like this: http://www.sportsmansguide.com/net/cb/lifesmart-1500w-infrared-heater.aspx?a=904121
I have heard that infrared heaters are junk. But some people love them. What is the straight dope?
i find the infrared quartz heater, where you see the tubes and they are fully exposed (behind a wire guard), to be useful for heating a person within a few feet of them, even in low humidity. they don’t heat the air very effectively especially in low humidity.
The advantage of an infrared heater is you can target the heat very precisely. They won’t heat a whole room very well, but they can heat the very small portion of the room where a person has to be. If you’re staying in one spot, that’s just as good, and since you’re not even trying to heat the rest, it takes less energy.
I hope you don’t mind if I piggyback a second question onto your thread: What is the most economical heater for heating an entire room? (3 people, not seated next to each other, all cold.)
We keep our thermostat at 55F because if we go higher we can’t afford our heating bills. We have oil heat in the house. But it would be nice to be able to warm up the living room during the evening when we’re all three of us in there.
Well, a 1,800 watt electric space heater will cost about $0.30 / hour in Boston, at full blast. I’m not sure there are too many other options. If you run it an hour a day that’s $9 / month. If your living room is well-insulated and free of drafts that might work okay. Make sure you put towels under doorways and such.
That infrared heater is $180, which seems like a lot, although it comes in a cool wooden box and has an air filter. You can get much cheaper space heaters on Amazon or at a local store. I have one that I bought from Target for about $40.
I believe a heat pump is much more efficient from a output heat/input watt perspective than a resistance heater (space heater), as long as outdoor temperatures are moderate. You’re limited to 1W out /1W in with a space heater.
They’re not as portable, however.
Isn’t that something that needs to be installed? We rent and we’re only living here until next July…
Kerosene or propane.
A small radiant kerosene heater will heat the people around it first, the room second. Kerosene hasn’t gone up in price in my area in about three years (if you can find it) and is still one of the most economical means to heat your home.
I own this heater, and can vouch for it. It can be placed against a wall which is quiet handy.
It’ll run about 12 hours on a tank (1 gallon) of kerosene, but you don’t run it continuously in most cases.
Here is the go to man for questions about Kerosene heaters btw: The Wick Guy
For propane, I’ve used the Mr. Heater Buddy and for portability it can’t be beat. It runs off of either the 1lb. propane cylinders or a large propane tank you use for a gas grill.
a quartz infrared heater warms people within a few feet of it. 1, 2 or 3 of these will keep your group warm. the type where you see the whole heating tube work best, they can be found for about maybe $50 (USA).
use them only when a person is sitting within the range they can feel the heat. they have high and low setting. great comfort for a situation like yours at lower cost and higher safety.
I wouldn’t run any combustion heater inside a closed room. I thought those things are meant for heating garages, workshops, etc.
So they don;t really heat an entire room then? Just whichever way it is facing then, right?
And are those Edenpure heaters any good? Or just hype?
I have been running kerosene heaters in every home I’ve lived in all my life.
Did you know if you breathe enough in an actual airtight room, it’ll eventually run out of oxygen? Thing is, very few homes are airtight.
A very small cracked window is all you need to get enough fresh air, in any case.
The little propane heaters come with a low oxygen safety shutoff.
Yeah I think I’d be wary of bringing kerosene or propane into the house. Especially with cats. Wouldn’t they smell, too?
I use one of these in my basement and have it set about 6 feet away from my sectional. Heats of the TV viewing area quit nicely and the rest of the room does get a little warmer (but not much). The basement is about 800 square feet; I imagine one of these would work well in a small living room of about 15 feet x 20 feet.
No, a properly running kerosene heater doesn’t smell as much as a scented candle. It only produces any smell when lighting or turning off.
A properly running propane heater doesn’t smell at all.
My cats lay directly in front of mine where the floor has been warmed toasty. 
I can heat my place for very little a month running kerosene, but it certainly isn’t for everyone.
Mine do the same in front of my propane heater.
If we’re talking about kerosene fan heaters like these, they are very safe - there are no exposed hot surfaces, and they turn off automatically if bumped or tipped over. The odor is barely noticeable.
But if we’re talking about something like this, they may be more dangerous, I don’t know - I have no experience with these.
We use one of those oil-filled radiator gizmos in the bedroom and it does a good job of maintaining an even, warm temperature throughout the room over time. It takes a while to get going if you start it up in a cold room, but left on it is wonderful.
In the bathroom, we use a mica panel heater because it is much faster to heat up nearby areas (and in the bathroom, everything is nearby). With the oil-filled one, we’d have to turn it on an hour or so before hand to warm things up.
This just leaves the lightning-fast run across the cold hallway from the bathroom to the bedroom.
I know exactly what you mean. I have a 1920’s house, brick with no insulation, and oil heat installed in the 50’s by the most incompetent people ever - there are four 50-foot long 4" pipes in the basement piping water to the radiators, powered by an oil burner we call “The Beast”. Left to its own devices, The Beast would burn 1000 gallons a month and keep the basement (only) toasty warm.
Those little Japanese Kerosene heaters are not sold in the U.S. unfortunately. I hear they are fantastic. We’ve been so thoroughly frightened away from kerosene heat in this country, it’s really a shame.