Fan heaters vs ceramic/radiator

dekaspace

Last year I had fan heaters in my flat apart from a ceramic heater in my living room as noticed they warmed the flat up very fast and the heat stuck for hours if not all night.

This year I got a oil filled radiator, and ceramic heaters and yes whilst the fan heaters were 2kw and the ceramic ones 1kw I feel cold all the time even if they are on all day.

If I put the fan heater on in living room for 2 or 3 hours its hot all day, have oil radiator on all day and its cold.

Is this right?

I notice the oil radiator turns on for like 5 minutes at a time and turns itself back off even at max thermostat settting.

lstar337

I doubt the heaters are responsible for you feeling cold.

A 2kW heater gives out 2kW of heat. That doesn't change if it is oil filled, ceramic, a convector, filled with jelly, made of cheese, or forged from the souls of pixies.

If you feel cold, it could be to do with your own state of being, or the flat is not keeping heat so well, or there was some other source of heat that is now gone.

Some things to consider:

1. State of being. Are you as well as you were previously? Has your body gone through any changes? Are you less active than you once were? Are you depressed, happy, etc.? (no need to answer these personal type questions)

2. Flat not keeping heat. Have you changed anything internally or externally on your flat? Have you replaced long thick curtains with shorter, thinner curtains? How are your windows, are they leaking air? Have you changed carpets? Have any neighbours (left/right/above) moved out causing your heat to leech through the walls and ceiling into an unheated space?

3. A source of heat that has now gone. Have you replaced any appliances that used to give off more heat? Have neighbours from the flat below moved out resulting in no heat rising into your flat from the on below?

Electrical heaters are all 100% efficient, so the type you buy is just personal preference to how the heat is delivered.

rustyboy21

A Convector heater will always give you directional, forceful heat. Rather than an Oil filled radiator/ceramic heater, which emits more radiant heat.

Both are good, but if you want a quick heat source then it needs to be a convector heater like an electric fire. Radiators will warm your room through the same, but it takes longer to do that.

Although everyone says electric is 100% efficient, a convector fire with a fan on it, does use electric to work the fan. This cannot be classed as efficient as all it is doing is pushing the heat source out, it is not creating heat itself, so in effect they are not 100% efficient

lstar337

rustyboy21 wrote: »

if you want a quick heat source then it needs to be a convector heater like an electric fire.

When somebody says electric fire to me I think of bar heaters, which are more radiant than convective. Convector heaters are more than likely to be a box on the wall with a grill at the top and bottom for air flow.

rustyboy21 wrote: »

Radiators will warm your room through the same, but it takes longer to do that.

Radiators work mostly through convection to, despite their name. They do radiate a little though.

rustyboy21 wrote: »

Although everyone says electric is 100% efficient, a convector fire with a fan on it, does use electric to work the fan.

The fan does use electricity, this is true, but it is still 100% efficient

rustyboy21 wrote: »

This cannot be classed as efficient as all it is doing is pushing the heat source out, it is not creating heat itself, so in effect they are not 100% efficient

This is not true, the fan also creates heat equivalent to its rating. If the fan didn't create heat then it would be breaking the laws of physics. It would be an energy destroying fan, and such a thing does not exist.

Say a fan heater is 2000W. The fan is 20W, the resistive element 1980W. 1980W of heat is produced by the resistive element, 20W of heat is produced as a waste product of the rotational movement of the fan. Combined they make a 2000W appliance.

If the heating element is 2000W and the fan is 20W, they make a 2020W appliance.

Energy is never destroyed, or created for that matter.

It just gets moved about.

rustyboy21

lstar337 wrote: »

When somebody says electric fire to me I think of bar heaters, which are more radiant than convective. Convector heaters are more than likely to be a box on the wall with a grill at the top and bottom for air flow.
99% of electric fires that are sold today have convector ( Fan ) heaters in them. I can only think of 2 models that have the old bars and they are ceramic bars fitted

Radiators work mostly through convection to, despite their name. They do radiate a little though.

This is not true, the fan also creates heat equivalent to its rating. If the fan didn't create heat then it would be breaking the laws of physics. It would be an energy destroying fan, and such a thing does not exist.

Say a fan heater is 2000W. The fan is 20W, the resistive element 1980W. 1980W of heat is produced by the resistive element, 20W of heat is produced as a waste product of the rotational movement of the fan. Combined they make a 2000W appliance.

If the heating element is 2000W and the fan is 20W, they make a 2020W appliance.

Energy is never destroyed, or created for that matter.

It just gets moved about.

Yet , if the heating elements of a fan heater are either removed, or broken, you will not get any heat out of it. Only the ambient temperature of the room it is being used in. Therefore It cannot be quoted as giving a heat output, Manufacturers do not quote it in their specs, yet people still say they are 100% efficient.

Dont even get me started on electricity being environmentally friendly and all appliances efficient compared to gas for example, when 70% of the electric produced by the power stations is lost through it's transportation to the household. Thats why manufacturers have now started to say 100% efficient at point of use. They wont talk about the millions of tonnes of CO2 and other nasties emitted into the atmosphere every year from power stations !

dekaspace

I seem to notice that the evenings are always hotter than the mornings, if I am cold during the day and dont turn heating on till nighttime it warms up very fast to the point I would turn it off after a hour or two and feel hot all night but around 9am every morning the temperature dips.

The living room is the coolest despite having the tv and computer on though, the bedroom is almost same size and reasonable sized kitchen, I do have a balcony door though that may have a minor draught.

Not sure if that is due to downstairs neighbour or not but I do know he only puts on heating in evening and has gas heating in all rooms and a small fan heater in his living room

Though if I have heating off totally all day the evenings are still freezing which confuses me.

The other theory is I run a computer which is a few hundred watts, a 70w lightbulb, and a old crt tv which may warm the house up a lot.

Put it this way in terms of the heating, normally my computers cpu runs abut 25 average or 30 when heating full blast, last winter I went away for 2 nights and it was running 7 degrees! and even with heating on all day by bedtime it got to 18 degrees.

lstar337

rustyboy21 wrote: »

Yet , if the heating elements of a fan heater are either removed, or broken, you will not get any heat out of it.

Not true, you will get ambient heat + the heat of the fan. The fan creates heat as a waste product equal to its rating. A 20W fan creates 20W of heat. A 120W TV creates 120W of heat. A 5W DVD player creates 5W of heat.

Remember the golden rule, energy cannot be destroyed.

rustyboy21 wrote: »

Only the ambient temperature of the room it is being used in. Therefore It cannot be quoted as giving a heat output, Manufacturers do not quote it in their specs, yet people still say they are 100% efficient.

Ambient heat + the heat created by the fan, 100% of the energy going in is converted to heat, therefore 100% efficient.

rustyboy21 wrote: »

Dont even get me started on electricity being environmentally friendly and all appliances efficient compared to gas for example, when 70% of the electric produced by the power stations is lost through it's transportation to the household.

Not that transmission losses have anything to do with the end user or whether their heater is 100% efficient or not, but where did you pluck the 70% value from?

Over transmission losses from power station to home are around 7%, so your figure is way off.

rustyboy21 wrote: »

Thats why manufacturers have now started to say 100% efficient at point of use.

Started?

rustyboy21 wrote: »

They wont talk about the millions of tonnes of CO2 and other nasties emitted into the atmosphere every year from power stations

Irrelevant. But you are right, so we should shut down all power stations and go back to the dark ages.

lstar337

dekaspace wrote: »

I seem to notice that the evenings are always hotter than the mornings, if I am cold during the day and dont turn heating on till nighttime it warms up very fast to the point I would turn it off after a hour or two and feel hot all night but around 9am every morning the temperature dips.

Not sure if that is due to downstairs neighbour or not but I do know he only puts on heating in evening and has gas heating in all rooms and a small fan heater in his living room

Most likely. His heat is traveling up through the floor and helping to heat your space.

dekaspace wrote: »

The other theory is I run a computer which is a few hundred watts, a 70w lightbulb, and a old crt tv which may warm the house up a lot.

Everything that consumes electricity will contribute to the space heating.

Furts

dekaspace wrote: »

I notice the oil radiator turns on for like 5 minutes at a time and turns itself back off even at max thermostat settting.

The answer may be here. I have two DeLonghi oil filled radiators which work fine. They are nicely made, stylish, with a 3 year guarantee but expensive.

There are countless oil filled radiators available from wholesalers and DIY sheds which are "Made in China" absolute rubbish. I purchase various ones last winter, which were supposed to be better quality Chinese (if there is such a thing!) and everyone exhibited the same characteristic as you quote. But in addition, the thermostats were not operating as a thermostat should - it was random when it cut in and out regardless to the temperature of the radiator. To make matters worse whilst they were dual heat settings, the switches seemed to have no effect.

All got returned at the end of the cold weather and none have been replaced this season. I have paid for better quality products this time around!

ashleypride

rustyboy21 wrote: »

Yet , if the heating elements of a fan heater are either removed, or broken, you will not get any heat out of it.

How exactly are these magical fans able to break the law of thermodynamics?

Whether you have just a 3kw fan, a 2980watt heater + 20 watt fan or 3kw heater the heat output and efficiency is exactly the same.

lstar337

dekaspace wrote: »

I notice the oil radiator turns on for like 5 minutes at a time and turns itself back off even at max thermostat settting.

Furts wrote: »

I purchase various ones last winter, which were supposed to be better quality Chinese (if there is such a thing!) and everyone exhibited the same characteristic as you quote. But in addition, the thermostats were not operating as a thermostat should - it was random when it cut in and out regardless to the temperature of the radiator. To make matters worse whilst they were dual heat settings, the switches seemed to have no effect.

I believe that the thermostats on some models are not measuring the room temperature, but the internal temperature of the oil/elements.

My oil rad does both, one is a safety measure to stop the unit getting too hot a damaging itself, the other is to maintain a set temperature for the room.

This could explain why your heater turned off quickly.