Radiant Vs Convection Heat Pumps
If you are looking for a way to heat your home effectively and efficiently, then there are a lot of choices to choose from. Central heaters are useful in many situations, but they aren't always the best tool for the job. Instead, you might want to consider space heaters, which are a very viable alternative. To help you decide if a space heater is right for you, here is an overview of the advantages offered by two types of space heaters: radiant space heaters and convection space heaters.
What is a radiant space heater?
A radiant space heater uses the power of radiation to distribute heat throughout a room. With radiation, heat is transferred directly to objects in the room, which offers some unique advantages. This direct transfer means that you will begin to feel warm and cozy as soon as the heater is turned on. With other heaters, you will need to wait for the room to slowly heat up before you actually get to enjoy the full effects, but with a radiant heater, you get immediate results.
On top of that, radiant heat doesn't move around the room in the same way as other heating methods. When hot air is blown into a room (the principle behind convection space heaters and most furnaces), that air rises and sits up near the ceiling. While there, that heat isn't actually doing all that much to keep you warm in the short term. To contrast, radiant heat is very good at staying down near the ground, which means that it will maximize the amount of heat that actually reaches you.
What is a convection space heater?
On the other hand, convection heaters heat up air and then blow that air throughout your room. The main advantage offered by such a solution is that it will keep your room very warm after you turn off the heater, whereas a radiant heater will stop being effective almost immediately after being turned off.
Convection heaters are also pretty good at covering a larger amount of area than radiant heaters, since hot air can move around quite a bit after it has been heated. Therefore, you can potentially heat up very large rooms or multiple smaller rooms with a single convection heater, whereas a radiant heater has a much lower area of effect. It may take a while for your convection heater to actually raise the temperature of multiple rooms, but it can usually be done.
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