Best Space Heaters
How to Find the Best Space Heaters for Your Home
Confused about how to find the best space heater for you?
The First Question to Ask
Do you want a portable space heater or one that is permanently affixed
to the area being heated?
The Best Space Heaters that are Permanently Affixed
There are two types of permanently attached heaters: electric and fuel
burning (natural gas, propane, or wood).
Electric heaters that are permanently attached are hard-wired to a
building's wiring. These are the large, commercial heaters
you see hanging from the ceiling in garages, factories, and large
storage areas. They produce a lot of heat, but they are not
designed for home use.
The best space heaters that are permanently affixed are natural gas
heaters.
Natural gas heaters have four advantages:
- there is less risk of fire than with kerosene heaters and
wood-burning stoves
- more convenient to use because you don't have to refill
them with fuel
- ordorless
- cheap to operate - natual gas is a very inexpensive fuel
But natural gas heaters do have two disadvantages:
- they must be installed by an HVAC professional
- they cost 2 - 4 times more to buy than electric and
kerosene heaters
The Best Space Heaters that are Portable
Most people choose one of the small electric heaters as the best space
heater for them simply because they want to easily move it from one
room to another.
There are two types of portable heaters - kerosene and
electric.
There are only two good reasons to buy a fuel-burning portable heater
instead of an electric one. The first reason is that the
heate will be used during power outages when an electric heater would
be useless. The other reason is that the area you intend to
heat is too big for a portable electric heater - kerosene heaters
produce a lot more heat than electric models and are often a good
choice to heat large areas.
If neither of these reasons for not choosing electric exist, then the
best space heaters for people who want to carry their heater from room
to room are electric heaters. Electric heaters have some big
advantages over kerosene heaters:
- easier to move and set up
- ordorless
- don't have to be refilled
- less risk of fire because there is no open flame
- absolutely no risk of carbon monoxide
poisoning