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iHeater IH-1500 Quartz Infrared Heater Best Value on Amazon
I am very pleased with this product. It lives up to all they say about it, with possibly one exception. It costs more than a $1 a day to run. It did raise my electric bill considerably, but it lowered my gas bill as well. I've given it one less star than top rating because dealers are misrepresenting the cost to operate.
What is so great is that I was much more comfortable running this heater. It keeps my whole home (granted, a small home 1100 sq feet) warm. It is such a comfortable, even heat. Not like my forced air furnace which makes the room either too hot or too cold about 50% of the time. And the heat is even throughout the house, unlike the furnace where some rooms are too warm and some too cold. I don't feel the drafts as much, the air isn't dry and I don't have to run a humidifier. My furnace rarely kicks in.
It is hard to believe that a small compact unit can do such a big job and do it safely. Only the small output area gets hot. Having a remote and being easily programmable is a definite plus also.
I am so pleased I made this purchase.
Bobbie's Buttons and Bows
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I ordered one of these after I got a $460 power bill in this crazy winter in the mid-Atlantic region, after the power company raised their rates through the ceiling and I read the reviews on what an incredible innovation in heating this unit is. It's a nice space heater; looks great, great controls, very quiet, etc. But it is what it is a 1500 Watt space heater. It won't cut your electric bill in half, unless you're willing to freeze in the process. The hype is transparent to me now, and I could have spent a lot less for the same heating output, though it certainly wouldn't have been as nicely adorned wi5h features that are expensive but in the end add nothing to the real goal...staying warm cheaply!
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I had the opportunity to use two of these units. I had an area of about 500 square feet to cover and thought that this would work well at supplementing the heat from electric baseboard heating.
This heater works a little different in that it does not really increase the temperature of spaces. It is designed to maintain the temperature in a room after you have getten it high enough using your main heat sources. They said to leave it on continuously for two days to bring all of the surfaces up to temperature and then turn down your main heat source about 10 degrees and let the heater maintain the temperature.
Unfortunately, the heater was not able to maintain the temperature very long at all and the unit remained on all of the time so I was burning through about 36KWH per day just for the iHeater in addition to the cost of running the electric baseboard heat which ran quite a bit as well. In my application, the energy costs were actually higher for me than they were before using the iHeater. In addition, the heat was very uneven across the area being covered. The unit does not blow that much air through it so it has a real limited coverage area, and that was on the 1500 square foot setting.
This might work in a very small room but not in any larger spaces. I had much greater hopes for this product than it was able to deliver on.
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I purchased my iHeater 1500 last week. Living in SE North Carolina, our temperatures aren't that bad. But as soon as we hit the 40's, I stayed cold. I set heater at highest level (1500 sq. ft.) and left it on for 2 days solid trying to warm it. It was cold even in the one room it was in. Yes, I kept my heat pump at 65 hoping this would help maintain that throughout my house but at least make the room it was in warmer. It says it heats up the elements. It may have heated them up, which I could not tell it did anything, but my hands and feet both stayed cold. Kinda feel like one guy said, it's pretty much like have a $30 quartz heater you can buy at Walmart. As a matter of fact, I have one of those and it heats the room better and uses the same amount of electricity. Sure wish I could say better things because I really wanted to save on my heating bill. But I can't . It' definitely not worth it.
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We recently had 2 of the 1500 model iHeaters bought for us as gifts from my parents. After getting them I looked at some of the reviews online and never really felt like I got very good information. At least I never saw anything written on how to actually use the heaters... I understood the concept -"your central heat doesn't turn on as much and therefore you save money". Made sense to me but what were the best settings to use? What should I expect? Etc...
Here's some background which should be useful:
This particular house I'm heating is a double-wide trailer, therefore it doesn't have Pella windows and isn't insulated like a brick & mortar home "should" be. We live in the mountains of Western NC. When we moved into this home the previous owner had just installed a brand new propane-powered central heating unit -it is NICE and it puts out the warmest heat I've felt from any central unit. The unit was so new that last winter was its first winter to actually be used. Last winter my parents were living with us, and as many people getting up in their years, they were both cold-blooded -so all winter they kept the thermostat at 72 degrees. 72 degrees meant that we paid somewhere around $500 every 6 weeks for propane! My parents moved out last spring and got us the 2 iHeaters to try this winter -paying $500 every 6 weeks for propane (excluding any electric bills) seemed ridiculous! I guess they figured that anything could help and nothing could hurt, so why not an iHeater (or 2).
Open the Box, Read the Directions:
At first the iHeaters seemed nothing more than "Ok". I got them when it was still warm outside and I was undoubtedly prejudging them. Mine are the fake wood models which I didn't find all that aesthetically pleasing. They didn't seem to put on a very "warm" heat in comparison to a ceramic heater. I needed to remember that the iHeater wasn't a ceramic heater and was actually meant to save money, which the hot-heat of a ceramic does not do. I thought the remote was cool and the back lighting looked good. I have 2 young children and these seemed very safe, which is important. I liked the fact the iHeaters are on rollers. For some reason I really like the oversized power button on the back of the unit. I needed to hold off on most of my judgments until I got them into action during the winter.
As I stated above, I didn't really know how to set them or what to expect. The directions that come with the iHeaters are no help. As an example, one of the iHeater settings says: "Small Room/Medium Room/Large Room". The only thing the directions tell you about these settings is that they are on the unit and can be controlled by the remote... What do they actually do? What is considered a small room and what is considered a large room? You have to find that out on your own I suppose. I honestly still don't exactly know what these buttons are for. I don't know if changing the room size setting changes the angle of the heat exiting the iHeater. I thought changing the room size setting might change the fan speed, but the best I can tell, it doesn't. Perhaps it somehow changes the fan setting or heat setting to use less electricity? I just have no idea...
One of the 2 iHeater units that we got has an extremely loud fan (in comparison to the other model 1500) and will have to be sent back to be fixed before the 1-year warranty runs out. If I didn't know how quiet the other unit was I would think it is normal (meaning it is not unbearable or anything). The unit that has the quiet fan is extremely quiet -you can hardly tell it is running. I returned my warranty cards and registered online with iHeater as soon as I got the unit out and realized how loud the fan was in comparison to the other unit. The faulty fan allowed me the opportunity to call iHeater and speak with their customer service. The young lady I spoke with had no accent and sounded young. Since it had been over a month since I registered the warranty she was able to pull up my information from their system easily. I have to admit that I was not very impressed with iHeaters customer service representative, at all, but between her coughing and gagging into her headset (and my ear!), she gave me the information I needed. It definitely seemed like talking to me on the phone was the last thing on her mind. It was almost comical how disinterested she was. I literally thought of the Discovery card "This is Peggy" commercial. Heh.
FIY: iHeater simply told me to box the unit back up and ship it to their Indianapolis, Indiana facility. They had pretty specific directions about how to box and ship the unit. I was told that I would have to pay to ship it to them and they would either fix it or replace it and get it back to me. I have since decided that I would keep the loud-fanned unit for this winter before sending it back. I simply am saving too much money to lose it for no telling how long (in the middle of winter).
Winter is Here! Running the IHeater:
One of the keys to using the iHeater is finding the right thermostat level between your central heat thermostat and your iHeater thermostat settings (the sweet spot). We found that if the central heat is set at 68 degrees the iHeaters (2 running at the same time in different parts of the house) will put out enough heat that our central heat will not kick on AT ALL, all night long. Sometimes the central heat will kick on 3 or 4 times first thing in the morning, but that's it. This example is when the outside temperature daytime highs are around 32 degrees Fahrenheit and the nighttime lows are from 10 15 degrees Fahrenheit.
Again, we have 2 iHeaters so we had to find the right thermostat level for EACH iHeater unit. One is set at 77 degrees and one is set at 72 degrees. With the discrepancy in settings between units this may mean that one of them is giving a faulty thermostat reading -not sure. There is also a big difference between the iHeater thermostat and the central heat thermostat -not sure why? At any rate, with these settings (77 & 72) both units will kick on and off if the daytime highs are in the high 30s and above. If the daytime highs outside are in the low 30s, both units will pretty much run all day long; however, the central heat thermostat level will not fall below 68 degrees and therefore the central heat unit will not engage, at all. The iHeaters are heating the entire house on their own to 68 degrees.
If my central heat's thermostat is set on 69 degrees the central heat will still turn on and off all night long. I'm not sure if the central heat runs as often, or not; however, I can for certain say that it runs on multiple times each hour. Again, while running the iHeaters the central heating unit does not turn on at all, but there is a big difference with the central heat between what happens at 68 degrees verses what happens at 69 degrees. 68 degrees is the "sweet spot" that you want to look for if you have an iHeater -the temperature where your central unit does not cycle. I submit that if I had better insulation and windows the "sweet spot" would be 70 or above. I would expect that the cost savings would greatly increase, too.
As winter approached I paid close attention to my electric bills and to my propane level. The propane tank started the winter in October at 41% full. At the beginning of December (after 2 months of weather cold enough to use the central heat, and one month of weather cold enough to use the central heat all day long every day) the propane reading was 37% full. So I only used 4% of the propane in the tank during October and November. Our usual "summer" electric bill was around $100 per month. Our November electric bill was $160. Obviously the iHeaters used quite a bit of electricity ($30 a day to be exact); however, the enormous savings in propane easily offset any electric costs (I really need the electric bills from last November -my guess is that the bill was close to $150 just powering the central heating unit). I suspect that the electric bill will go up substantially in December since the iHeaters are running more often. As I mentioned, when the outside temperatures are at or below 32 degrees Fahrenheit all day long, the iHeaters pretty much run all day, nonstop.
We are more than happy with the cost savings, so far. I feel that if I had better windows, doors and better insulation I could save much more money, but I'm not going to fault iHeater for the construction practices of trailer manufacturers. I figure you know something is good when directly out of the box it is not running like it should -which leads you to find out that the customer service is laughable -not only do those things not bother you, but you wouldn't give the item up for the world because you are saving so much money by using it!
Sam
