I have a love/relationship with portable heaters. I love them when they are working and help to keep me warm. I hate when I can’t find a good one that will do what I need one to do.
A bit of background (feel free to skip down to ***)
When my hubby and I first moved from California to Wisconsin, one of the things we were really hoping for was a nice porch on our house. We got very lucky and not only does the house we rent have a porch, it is an enclosed porch.
Now anyone that knows about cold winter weather (-10 to around 30 degrees) knows that the cost of heating a house in winter is
very expensive. We learned very quickly that it would be best to close the vents on the porch and wait for warmer weather to use it.
When I made the decision to open a family daycare in my home, I also realized that the porch would make a wonderful playroom. I worked on it and bought kid sized tables, chairs, cubbies, rugs, toys and the whole nine yards.
In the summer time we put a room air conditioner in the window and that seemed to keep it cool enough to be comfortable for all of us.
When the temperatures started to drop, I opened the vents and put the plastic window treatments on all fourteen of the windows to help keep out the drafts. It helped, but the room was still chilly.
I figured there was one simple solution, a small heater for the room. Simple huh? ….not quite.
The search was on
Somehow I thought that bigger meant better, as in so many areas of life, that isn’t necessarily so.
I can’t for the life of me remember what kind of heater the first one I bought was. It was tall and looked like it would be powerful. Wrong. The darn thing blew warm air but not nearly enough and after about a month of use, it stopped working altogether.
Back to Wal*Mart. I got another heater/fan. This time it was a Pelonis. I took it home, plugged it in and nothing. Grrrrr. Back to Wal*Mart again and I got the exact same one again. This time it worked fine and does help to keep the room warm, but I found I liked using it in the livingroom too, so I decided I needed another heater. This time I bought the Honeywell Surround Heat Heater.
****The Heater
The fact that I’m using this heater in my playroom around children, I needed something that was small and yet worked well enough to help heat the 33’ x 7 1/2’ room and the toughest part is I didn’t have a lot of money to spend.
The
Honeywell Surround Heat Heater model HZ-2200 in charcoal seemed to call to me. Actually, it was recommended by someone I met at Wal*Mart who was fighting the same heater battle that I was.
This heater is 11 ½” tall and approximately 8” across and is made of high quality plastic. It is round and can heat 360 degrees around or can be switched to only be front heating. This is helpful when you want to heat more of the room and I’ve also used it to add heat to our bedroom and bathroom at the same time. It is an added feature that I really like. There is a simple switch on top that can be set in either position.
The front of the heater has two knobs for the heat settings. There is a thermostat control knob. Turning this all the way to the High setting will give you the most amount of heat, but you can also turn it back a bit when the room is at the temperature that you want. Doing this until the heater turns off will set your heater thermostat at that temperature. From that point on the heat will turn off when the room hits the temperature and will turn back on when the room goes below it.
The second knob is a Child Resistant Power switch. To use this knob you have to push down the two side of knob and turn clockwise to the setting you would like. The settings are *Off *Fan *Low *High. The power light illuminates when the unit is turned on, but this type of switch helps to ensure that the heater cannot be turned on unintentionally. This is also a safety feature that I like.
This heater also has a tip feature that will automatically turn the unit off if it is tipped forward or backward. I am surprised to read that it won’t turn off if it rolls on its side.
This unit is equipped with a motor thermal fuse that shuts it off if it should become too hot. This is another feature that I like because I do have it running 24 hours a day to keep the playroom warm. I feel safer with it having this feature.
There are a couple of things I don’t like about this heater. First is the fact that it is a little bit hot to the touch. It wouldn’t burn fingers, but is warmer than I would like for it to feel. I have it up, out of the children's reach but would still prefer that it be cool to the touch.
Also, it does not have a carrying handle. The lower part seems to be cooler and is easy to put your hands around, but it is not a handle. I seem to move these little heaters a lot and would prefer it to have an actual handle.
I'm not sure how much this unit will affect my electric bill. I am hoping that it will be no worse than the room air conditioners are, but I do feel it is necessary to have this unit running.
The heater does not dismantle, so the only cleaning that you can do is a quick wipe down with a damp cloth to keep it clean.
I would recommend this heater to someone who needs to add additional heat to a room. It seems to heat efficiently and I only paid $22.87 for it at Wal*Mart.
A Great BIG Thank You to Amy aka/ mind-full for adding this heater so quickly to the database. You are the best!
