Space heater or electric blanket?

Grim/Don

Grim/Don

Joined
Feb 1, 2003
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I'm thinking about trying to keep my son's bedroom warmer...

My first thought was a space heater, but he's got the biggest bedroom in the house (ours has a bathroom). Then I thought an electric blanket would be better, but I think I remember cautions about getting them for kids... We have a smaller space heater in out room, and it wouldn't be hard to get another power strip and a heater for his room.

Thoughts?
 
MY GF has a large electric blanket that covers her entire bed. She leaves it on ALL DAY, and has for about a month now. Not sure how safe that is, but it has yet to cause any problems. It's actually on right now while she is at school...I should turn it off. It only heats the bed though, rest of the room is freezing.

They make space heaters for garages, lots of heat. A guy I work with has one built to heat 1,500sq. ft. garage and he keeps it in his room. He says it's 85F in there in the dead of winter. But I don't know anything about it, what model, or anything. The downside would probably be the electric bill.
 
For what's it worth, I'd pass on the electric blanket. Here's why. At my wife's Christmas party for work this year I met a woman who was horribly disfigured by an electric blanket that caught fire while she slept. Her face and neck are very scarred, as are her hands. Her fingers are just nubs. I guess she's had dozens of surgery to repair her ears, nose, lips, etc.

Very sad. Granted, this happened a dozen or so years ago. I don't know if the technology today has made them safer, but I vowed to never own one after seeing that!

Scott

BTW, I guess she got a huge settlement from the Manufacturer (meaning the unit was faulty??).
 
Misused electric blankets can cause burns. That being said, I used them all the time growing up and never had a problem. Electric blankets from name brand companies are safe but, relatively expensive.

Space heaters have their own risks. Kids can inadvertently drop something, kick a blanket off the bed, get a shoe lace flung into the heater and start a fire.

Putting a space heater on a power strip creates fire risk. If you are going that route, buy a heavy gauge extension cord and skip the power strip. Over loaded extension cords and circuits are fires looking for a reason to start.

Bedroom fires are devastating even when the child doesn't suffer any harm. A coworker had that happen and the emotions involved where more then words can describe.
 
We have an electric mattress pad heater with dual controls. The heat comes from under you and is very comfortable. I think we got it at Walmart.
 
I bought two of the oil-filled radiator heaters, one for the library where I often stay up late and one for the baby's room. One is a Holmes brand and the other is a Lakewood. Both have worked great, and each has a thermostat and three different power settings.

I can't think of any hazard associated with them. They do get very warm to the touch, but not hot enough to catch anything on fire. Just to be safe I keep them in the center of the room, where they work best anyway.

-Bob
 
I used the oil-filled radiator for my kids' room until about two weeks ago. They worked fine, but I wanted an upgrade . . . something more permanent. I installed 6' 240v 22amp electric baseboard heaters in their rooms (one per room). AW YEAH!! Super warm, and no radiator to trip over, no cords to move out of the way, etc. The hardest part of course was running 10-2 wire through the walls in the neatest possible way. My house was built in the 50's, so running the wire (neatly) was a bit of a challenge, but well worth it in the end.

Andy
 
I'd go with the heater instead of the electric blanket--preferably one like the oil filled radiator.

The room still needs to be warm enough to function in without having to hide beneath the covers to stay warm, doesn't it?
 
Yah I didn't mention my GF's heated blanket cost nearly $100, it wasn't a cheapy. I wouldn't trust a $20 electric blanket.
 
His bedroom is the biggest in the house, but you do not need to heat the whole bedroom, but you can easily heat more than just the blankets.

My 10 year old daughter has the bottom bunk in the girls' room. She hangs sheets around her bunk turning it into a tent or something. A oil filled finned radiater type heater set on low heat (600 watts) with the thermostat below 25% keeps her tented bed toasty with the room at 50F. It is a few degrees warmer than the room just with her in it heating it.

You can also "duct" central heat or cooling into the canopy to make it the most heated or cooled zone of a larger space. We have done this with sheets and blankets over a line of chairs leading from a low wall vent to the bed.

Canopy beds have several advantages in addition to insulation. They kept the bugs and dirt from a sod roof from landing on the bed, keep out mosquitoes and other undesireables, give some degree of privacy in a shared environment, and can be styled to be many things including an army tent, princess' boudiour, rocket ship, fallout shelter, etc.
 
Get a radiant heater. Radiant (radiates heat and incidentally heats air) as opposed to convection (heats air and incidentally radiates heat) are much more comfortable. You feel warm in a room where the air is quite cold but there is a radiant heat source nearby, and cold in a room where the air is warm but there is no radian source and the walls are cold.
Radiant heaters are electric heaters where the resistance heats a slab of stone or some liquid (oil, etc...).
 
We use the oil filled radiator type heater in our kid's room. They were plenty warm under their comforters to sleep, but it used to be pretty chilly in the morning before getting the heater.
 
Electric heat is nearly double or more in operating costs than standard heating from oil or gas. I am going to assume that you have a central heated home with forced air. I would install a duct blower to force more heat into the bedroom. Often the bedrooms are furthest away from the furnace, and air circulation as a result is poor and these rooms stay cold. Go down to the Home Depot or building supply store and go to the furnace section and ask for a duct blower. You install them inside the warm air duct below the grill, and these pull more warm air into the room from your furnace ductwork.

If the house runs on hotwater radiators, I would check the rad and bleed any air from it as airlocks prevent this type of rad from circulating the hot water properly. Check the supply valve, it should be open fully.

Check the room for airleaks and insulation levels in the attic. Sometimes the solution is to caulk cracks around the windows and adding insulation to the attic. This is the cheapest fix of all and pays you back in lower heating bills.

Electric space heaters are a temporary measure only, not a permanent fix. The heat they provide are nice, but remember that when the electric bill comes, you will pay Mr. Edison handsomely. As a rule of thumb, one electric space heater uses as much as an entire house does. IE 1000-1500 watt space heater uses as much electricity as a home with a fridge, deep freezer, furnace motor and TV with lights on all at the same time. This is just an average figure as things like electric hotwater heaters and stoves are used intermittently.

Don't forget that electric space heaters go up like the 4th of July when things like blankets and curtains come into contact with them, so make sure you have a working smoke detector in the room you are going to use them.

At the very least I would go with the electric blanket, much cheaper than running a space heater, especially if it is a large room.
 
If the house runs on hotwater radiators, I would check the rad and bleed any air from it as airlocks prevent this type of rad from circulating the hot water properly. Check the supply valve, it should be open fully.
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That's what our home is. The real advantage of the electric radiant heaters is that late at night we can heat only the one or two rooms we need instead of running the natural gas boiler (very expensive) that heats the entire 3200 sq. feet. Since our programmable thermostat is set to 55 at night, the boiler rarely comes on between early evening and the next morning.

-Bob
 
4W4K3 said:
MY GF has a large electric blanket that covers her entire bed. She leaves it on ALL DAY, and has for about a month now. ... It only heats the bed though, rest of the room is freezing.
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Why would she do this?

If you have problems remembering to turn it off, put it on a timer.

I think it's dangerous, a waste of energy, and will prematurely wear out her blanket.
 
scottang1 said:
For what's it worth, I'd pass on the electric blanket. Here's why. ...
Click to expand...

Do you also skip riding in cars? Some of the most horible, disfiguring injuries result from car accidents.

Anything can malfunction causing injuries or deaths. A lot of people use electric blankets without injury.
 
Sid Post said:

Space heaters have their own risks. Kids can inadvertently drop something, kick a blanket off the bed, get a shoe lace flung into the heater and start a fire.

Putting a space heater on a power strip creates fire risk. If you are going that route, buy a heavy gauge extension cord and skip the power strip. Over loaded extension cords and circuits are fires looking for a reason to start.
Click to expand...

I can only underscore what Mr. Post has said here. Safety first, especially when mixing kids and electricity.
 
K.V. Collucci said:
You want a Vornado Heater! I have 3 in my house. I cut my heating bills by hundreds this winter.
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Vornado is known as a high-quality manufacturer. But, they do have a few models on recall, so you should double-check yours to be sure they don't fall into that category.

Being a new-product developer, I receive a list every month of product recalls, safety actions, etc. Every month, a very substantial fraction of them are for home heating appliances. It is frightening to see some of the products that get sold. Stick with major name brands and try hard to find American-made products. It's very common to see cases where the Chinese contract manufacturer made the first production batch with over-temperature interlocks and high-temperature wire as UL requires. But then, without the permission of their American client, cut their costs by literally just omitting the safety interlock and switching to cheaper, standard-temperature wire. If something goes wrong, the unit will quickly overheat and, without an over-temperature interlock, the low-temperature-rated wire insulation will quickly catch fire. This sort of recall is just all to common. Stick with a major American name brand if you can.
 
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