Many apartments in New York are heated by radiator heat that you can’t control, so the temperatures can vary from room to room. We’ve always relied on space heaters for our colder rooms during the winter (I actually have a heating pad on my lap right now with a space heater on beside me)! We also use them at the dining table when it’s chilly in the mornings, or after baths in the evenings. It can potentially save a lot on your heating bill to use a space heater rather than heat an entire home, and they’re pretty convenient since they heat up right away.
Old school Asian parents are always worried about being too cold, so I’ve used a myriad of heating devices throughout my life from space heaters to blanket-sized heating pads. The apartment we lived in when Charlie was born was particularly chilly, and we used a Vornado Vortex heater in his nursery during cold winter nights. I liked it because it did a great job heating his entire room, didn’t get hot to the touch (like many space heaters do), and it automatically shut off when it was tipped over so it was safe to use around kids and pets. However it did cause brown-outs in Mr. Bee’s office, and ours died after a couple years of use.
We’ve been experiencing a severe cold weather snap like most of the US, and we wouldn’t be able to make it through the winter without our space heaters! How do you keep your home warm?
persimmon / 1385 posts
Our home heats *pretty* evenly for a 80+ year old house, but we like to keep the thermostat low at night, so we had to get a space heater for LO’s room. We started with a Vornado, which was great at first, but after about a week or so the thermostat broke. I went into LO’s room one morning to find the temperature in the room around 85 degrees! Not good!
After that we got a different a less expensive Homes space heater with a thermostat (it was the only thing I could find in store) and also attached one of these programmable outlet thermostats so that if the room gets above a set temp it turns the heater off. So far so good!
http://amzn.com/B000E7NYY8
kiwi / 511 posts
Our house overall (mostly 40ish years old the addition is newer) is pretty good. Our trouble space is the living room and office because they are in the addition that sits over the 2 car garage. Once we brought our first guy home we actually don’t turn down the temp that much at night because he was so used to it being crazy hot in the orphanage all the time, and he is so skinny he is often cold. But I am slowly working the thermostat back down I want to hit 62 at night.
For 98% of the windows (which are 2 years old so not drafty) I have put a backing of white fleece fabric (used stitch witchery so I only had to iron it on) and that cut down the cold feeling. I also got honeycomb blinds for the office and living room and got in the habit of raising and lowering them. They are not the super fancy light blocking or thermo but they help and I like that they filter the light during the day if I want to watch TV during the day to cut the glare. And finally this year I got a Lifelux 1500 oscillating heat tower. It is infared and doesn’t get hot to the touch, it has a timer and various settings. I like it and to be honest I don’t use the remote, I generally put it on around 6 or 6:30 and turn it off around 7:30 and by the time the room is getting uncomfortably cool for me it is time for me to go to bed so it helps motivate me to do that :).
This is the one I got but I got it off woot.com so I didn’t pay that price. http://tinyurl.com/m5o4825
grapefruit / 4923 posts
how timely–i was just researching space heaters last night!
kiwi / 578 posts
@edelweiss: me too!!
Thanks!! @Mrs. Bee:
papaya / 10343 posts
We had that Vornado and I loved it for about 3 weeks until it started smelling like burnt electrical stuff…. scary!
apricot / 317 posts
We have a 35 year old house, and while our heat pump does okay, it tends to struggle when the. temps get below freezing (which, thank heavens, does not happen often in GA). We use a tiny Holmes space heater for whatever room we’re in…and we love it. We’ve had it for years and it does a fabulous job.
persimmon / 1310 posts
We’ve been using a pair of delonghi oil filled electric radiators for 7 years now. They are still like new and have saved us so much money. Ours were made in Italy though, while some of their products are made in China.
Last winter we heated our apartment exclusively with them because we were in a condo with terribly poor electric forced air. Our bills were half that of our neighbors.
We use them on the low setting, just using medium occasionally. When mobile kids become a factor, we might just use low. It isn’t too hot to touch then.