Portable Room Heaters are ideal appliances for people living in areas which become chilly in winter but not really cold. In spite of warm clothing, blankets, room insulation, and so on, the chill still affects people of all ages, and mostly infants and elderly people. Here is a buyer’s guide on how to choose the best room heater.
If you live in regions that get really cold, like minus 10°C and lower, portable room heaters are not a good option and you would need other equipment and methods to keep your home and office warm enough. However, portable room heaters are great for most places in North India and hills or plateaus in South India. For instance, it gets really chilly in winter and uncomfortably hot in summer in places like New Delhi, Jaipur, Kolkata. Ooty, a hill station in South India, also has warm summer days and pretty cold winters.
This is why homes and offices in India do not need the kind of high-cost heating and cooling equipment and insulation that is necessary in really cold countries. Most of India is more suited to air conditioners (cooling) in summers and portable room heaters in winters, with fans providing comfort in the other seasons.
Cons of using a room heater
Since this is a buyer’s guide on how to choose the best room heater, it is important to note some points about room heating. Humidity normally goes down in winter. Portable room heaters tend to dry out the available moisture in closed rooms, which leads to dry skin and associated discomforts and health risks. Moreover, unlike air conditioners, room heaters do not exchange the air in the room with outside air. This means that if a room is too heavily insulated, the warm air in the room can become toxic and lead to respiratory problems. However, these are minor points and can be easily handled as follows:
- If your heater does not include a humidifier, keep a bowl or small bucket of water in the room.
- Make sure that your room is not too tightly insulated. The small gaps below the doors are good. If you have to insulate, do not underestimate the power of self-insulation with warm clothing, especially socks, hoodies, blankets. While these will take care of your and your loved one’s body, the room heater will take care of that part of the bed or chair that is not so well insulated.
- If you need to keep the heater on all night, then use a dual power heater. Start off with the higher power for 30 mins or so, and then switch to the lower power before you get into bed.
- Make sure your heater is at least 3 feet or 1 meter away from other objects. Objects too close to a room heater may catch fire.
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Choose the best room heater: Power requirement
The first thing you want to consider when purchasing a room heater is the area of your room. The general rule of thumb when you choose the best room heater is 10W (Watts) of power per square foot. Thus, you would need a 2,000W room heater for a room of 200 sq.ft. If your rooms are of different sizes and you want to take your heater with you when you move, say from your living room to your bedroom which may be smaller, then you might want to purchase a heater that provides both 1,000W and 2,000W of power.
Best Room Heater Types
Next, you need to decide on the type of heater that you want. There is a lot of jargon which may be technically important. But, a layperson may find it confusing. In general, for a buyer’s guide on how to choose the best room heater, these are the points you want to look into:
Fan heaters and non-fan heaters
Fan heaters have a fan that blows the heat generated by the heating element or coil into the room. This helps in distributing the heat in the room. Non-fan heaters generate more heat than fan heaters for the same amount of electricity consumed but are only able to heat objects that are directly in front of the heating element. Hence, non-fan heaters are more of “personal” heaters than “room” heaters.
Fan heaters are more noisy than non-fan heaters, but that is not really a major issue when you choose the best room heater because your ceiling or table fans are probably more noisy than fan heaters. If you require distribution more than focused heat, go for fan heaters. Personally, we prefer fan heaters because we like to move around rather than sit in front of the heater.
Oil filled heaters
These heaters contain oil which gets heated first and from which the heat spreads into the room. Oil filled heaters work in the convection mode. There is movement of the hot air from the floor to the ceiling and the cooler air from the ceiling to the floor until both temperatures are matched. Thus, oil filled heaters take longer to heat up the room, but the room remains warm longer than other heaters. Oil filled heaters also do not dry the air hence you might not need the bowl or bucket of water in your room for moisturization. These are distribution type heaters rather than personal type heaters.
Infrared, ceramic, quartz, halogen, etc
Don’t bother much about these terms because the differences are negligible. These are non-oil heaters; they may be fan or non-fan. They heat up the room faster than oil filled heaters, but the room cools down faster when the heater switches off.
Gas and other types of heaters
Not really applicable to general Indian conditions.
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The best room heater: More considerations
- Power. As pointed out above, you might want dual or even multiple power instead of single power. Thus, a heater that works at 500W, 1,000W and 2,000W is probably more expensive to buy but better in the long run in terms of electricity bill savings.
- Size and shape. The smaller the better. Most heaters nowadays are 2ft x 1ft x 6in which is pretty convenient for standard sized rooms. Also, you may prefer tower or standing type heaters which occupy less floor or table space.
- Moisturizing and non-moisturizing. Moisturizing heaters have an in-built compartment for water which evaporates steadily when the heater is on. There is normally a knob for turning moisturizing on and off.
- Timer. You might want a heater with a timer that you can set to 1-5 hours. When you set the timer, the heater will turn off automatically after the set number of hours.
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Anando Banerjee has been providing different types of services, as an employee and thereafter as a self-employed professional, to clients in multiple industries in various countries of the world since 1984. He has an MBA in Healthcare Management.