When winter comes, you really want to do what you can to keep the room warm. Sure, the air-conditioner may work OK but recycled air doesn’t feel that good after a while and also, it doesn’t get warm enough for me.
I’ve unfortunately been ill-informed when I purchased my space heater to warm up my cot and so my room is still not warm. To prevent people from making the same mistake, here’s some information to help you choose your space heater.
There are 2 major kinds of space heaters (categorised by their heating methods):
1) Convective Heaters
2) Radiative Heaters
Convective Heaters
This type of heater warms the air directly or via heating oil or another filler to warm up the air in the room. 2 of such heaters are oil heaters and wire-element heaters. Oil heaters take a longer time to warm up but they are safer than wire-element heaters which heat up a lot faster but also pose as a fire hazard as it can reach high surface temperatures.
Radiative Heaters
This is the type of space heater I unfortunately bought, not because it is not good but because it wasn’t what I was looking for. The radiative heater that I have is a halogen heater. It uses tungsten filaments and metal reflectors to produce heat. How such heaters work is that the radiation produced is largely absorbed by clothes and skin before it gets to heat the air in the room. So yes, it can still keep you warm. Mine is doing a fine job but I would rather have my room warm. If not, I’m really using it like a こたつ (kotatsu), which is a heated table.
This is what my space heater looks like.
I now have it below my desk to warm up my legs, just like how a こたつ works. You’d be surprised how warm you’ll feel just by warming up your legs. Sadly my bed and everything else remains cold.
