Permsteading.com

i was poking around my local "green depot" and came upon these:

http://www.biosmartsolutions.com/heaters/wall

they seem pretty cool, theoretically 20% more efficient than traditional electric heaters. they do seem to emit a nice heat (less "blow-ey" and more "stove-y" if that makes sense) and are very very quiet. if you have those cadet style heater, or baseboards, might work as an upgrade for not much money.

Infared heating does work and is very efficent. I do not understand the therory as to why it works but they say it heats up the ' things ' in the room and not the air in the room. So it heats the walls, floor, ceiling, chairs, couches, and YOU. A guy I know installed it in his Lumber Yard and felt it really did cut his heating bills. I have not had any experiance with using it myself so I can't really say from personal experiance. I have seem alot of ads for Amish built electric heaters that they claim will save you alot of money. The Amish build a Cherry or Oak cabinet around the heater so it looks nice in your home. The unit is on wheels so you can move it to the room you are in at the time. I don't know if it uses the same tech as the infared heater but I am guessing that it might. Some of the savings they claim could be from the fact that you keep the house cold and just roll the heater into the room where you happen to be. Using space heaters to add heat to the area where you are and keeping the rest of the house cooler does make sense and can save you alot of money.

Just a cautionary comment here.

A couple of years ago I bought a well known brand name infrared heater. It was in use when the power grid went down for several hours. The power light came back on, but the heater hasn't worked since. The power outage kept the fan from running long enough to cool the tubes, which shattered. I'm waiting to hear from the manufacturer to see if this is covered under the limited warranty.

Interesting Lolly, I did not know that they could have a problem like that. Thanks for sharing your experiance.

Those look pretty neat Eeldip. I think little electric heaters in whatever space you are in at the time represent just about the least energy hungry way to heat right now.

Lolly, your warning makes sense to me. My power goes out often in the winter, so I'd be curious to see how these deal with that scenario.

from a little sales talk they gave me at the green depot, the durability of the heating element is a known problem with the technology in general. the brand i linked to promotes themselves as having long lasting, easily user serviceable parts. for what thats worth.

if you compare the cost of a new heating element to say, yearly maintenance on a gas furnace, its not too bad.

That is a very good point eeldip, many forms of heat requier maintanance. I know that I expect an electric space heater to last forever because I have one that has. They are very reliable and have few if any moving parts. But my oil furnace I pay to maintain every year, and it costs alot for them to tell me it is working fine. If there were a small cost to keep an electric heater working well I don't think it would cost as much as the oil heater. We have a mental threshold for costs, in our heads. If something goes over that amount we feel it is very expensive. We expect electric heaters to run maintanace free for years, so a $10 repair bill would be outragous. But if a repaiman charged us $50 to come out and service the oil burner, even though he found nothing wrong, we would think it was a bargan. It has nothing to do about actual costs, it has to do with our mind set and our expectations.

If you are looking at the purchase of an infra-red heater now, I'd suggest asking if there is a battery back-up for the cooling fan. If not, how long will it take for the company to send you new heating tubes in the event of a power outage?

I have follow-up! Yeah, it's been a while, but there is more to the infra-red heater tale.

It took a few days, but I did get my information copied and mailed off to the manufacturer. They responded quickly with two shipping labels. I took the unit to UPS and had it packed from my money (since I didn't have the original package), per instructions. One week later, the repaired heater was sitting at my front door.

Sounds like the Company responded pretty well to your problem. I am glad that they made it right for you, and they did it pretty quickly. We have all heard horror stories about Companys that will not stand behind their produces, its nice to hear about a CXompany who does make a good produce and stands behind it.