Electric Space Heaters: an Electrician’s Opinion

Electric space heaters have become increasingly popular in recent years as a low cost alternative to provide supplemental heating for homes or offices. These devices come in various forms, including heat dishes, electric fireplaces, radiant heaters, and other plug-in options that can easily be moved around the room.

Benefits

The main advantage of electric space heaters is to provide targeted heating in specific areas and during specific times, reducing the need to heat your entire home or office unnecessarily. They are lightweight and easy to move around, allowing you to place them wherever needed for additional warmth, and they don’t require installation — it’s as easy as plugging them into an outlet. Depending on the style of heater they are also relatively quiet, with some models having no moving parts at all.

A common reason for using space heaters rather than a permanent heat source is when you only need heat temporarily — for example in a garage or a workshop. If you’re only in the room for a few hours at a time every couple days, it doesn’t make much sense to keep that room warm all the time. A space heater is perfectly suited to that scenario.

More efficient? Not really.

With that said, electric space heaters are not technically more “efficient” than conventional baseboard heaters. Any resistive heat source — baseboard, space heater, electric oven — will convert 100% of its electric input into heat. Any 1500 watt electric heater will generate 1500 watts worth of heat. This is different than heat pumps, which absorb heat from outside air or the ground, which allows them to be more than 100% efficient. Put simply, any heat source that is located entirely indoors cannot be more than 100% efficient.

The reason space heaters are sometimes referred to as more efficient than baseboard heaters is that you can heat up targeted areas instead of a much larger space. This is especially true for infrared heaters, which often look like a heat dish and provide heat in a specific direction. That directional heat means you can point the heater towards yourself and perhaps get away with fewer watts consumed compared to heating up the whole room.

Tripped Breakers

Electric space heaters typically draw about 1500 watts of electricity, which means they often cause issues when placed on a circuit with other appliances. If you have ever tried to use a toaster oven and microwave on the same circuit, for example, you will be familiar with the tripped breaker that inevitably results. This means your space heater may require a dedicated circuit breaker circuit by itself, or use a different circuit with fewer devices on it.

Safety

Another important consideration when using electric space heaters is safety. These devices obviously get quite hot during operation, so they should never be left unattended or placed near flammable materials. Most people will think to move away a stack of papers, but some synthetic fabrics can be quite flammable as well. Given that these heaters are almost always placed on the floor, they are also within reach of pets or children who may stick toys (or fingers) inside the heater or knock it over.

Comparison with Other Heating Methods

When thinking of a portable heat source, there is really no alternative to an electric space heater other than a gas-powered space heater, which comes with very important limitations, the most important being a requirement for ventilation due to the carbon monoxide they produce. This is why gas heaters are only recommended for use in spaces like garages or sheds — not your living room.

Otherwise, the closest comparison may be a wood stove — although not portable, it’s a very localized heat source that radiates out to the rest of the room. Of course, any similarities end once we look at installation costs, and your insurance company may not be receptive to retrofitting a wood stove into your house.

Beyond that, any comparison will be against heating methods that heat the whole room, like baseboard heaters, furnaces, or heat pumps.

Conclusion

In our professional point of view, our main thing to keep in mind when discussing space heaters is safety. Don’t overload circuits, don’t put the heater next to anything flammable or within reach of children and pets, and most importantly never use a gas-powered heater in your house.

The J&D Electric Difference

We offer reliable scheduling and are always accessible when you need us. Our flexibility allows us to work with your budget, and our specialized team of experts means we can take on any electrical project from the initial planning through the final clean up and walk through inspection. We are locally owned and our goal is to provide quality work that will last, excellent customer service and communication throughout your entire electrical repair project, and finish on time and within budget. At J & D Electric Ltd, our estimates are always upfront with no undisclosed fees. Customers appreciate that we describe every detail to ensure a seamless process during the entire project.

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J&D Electric Ltd.

46 Woodlawn Ave, Moncton, NB E1E 2J9

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(506) 858-7070

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(506) 859-6893

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