EDENPURE Heater

Richard S. wrote: Matter of fact most of them are made in Easter Pennsylvania to be exact.

Funny you should mention Pennsylvania. The elements in our heaters are made there.

Ozarks wrote:Did I mention our heaters are wholly made in USA?

Yup, believe it or not they're made from parts, sheet metal, and wood in a Mennonite factory about 20 miles from where I'm sitting. Please just don't conflate us with the "Amish" heater you may see in national publications - the "two not-so-free heaters" ads I referred to in my last post.

Yes I was talking about 2 not so free heaters I see in the sunday paper ads. If their are ones made here I apologize. I had a very small house (900 sqft total maybe) and the heating system was forced hot air. My living room heat dispersers were in the ceiling and the carpet/padding was laid on concrete. Did the floor get cold! Bought an edenpure and the lower level was never cold again. I paid maybe 30/40 bucks more a month on electric and all I can say without the facts is my furnace kicked on alot less during the day when I ran the unit.

I tried an Eden pure that a friend had purchased & will say that maybe in a 900 sq area there may be some relief--but for large areas--not so good.Ozarks, finish doing your profile, nobody'll steal ya

The limits of a 120 VAC, 15 amp circuit dictate that the maximum BTU's are around 6,000.

15 amps x 120 volts = 1,800 Watts

1,800 Watts x 3.412 BTU's per Watt = 6,142 BTU's/hr. of maximum output.

If you had one Edenpure in every room of your house it might work. Large rooms would require several of them.

The standard for electrical heat is to have 10 Watts per square foot of floor space for a typical old home, and perhaps you can get by with ~7 Watts per square foot for a well insulated modern home.

1,800 Watts/ 10 Watts per square foot required = 180 square feet. A 12' x 15' room has 180 square feet of floor space. On the coldest day of the year any room larger than that will be cold with only one maxed out 15 amp x 120 VAC electrical heater running in it.

Thanx for explaining that one. What the hell did you just say?

In reality it's worse that that though, as 120 VAC electrical room heaters are generally limited to only 12 amps. That's a bit less than 5,000 BTU's of output per hour per electrical heater. About enough heat for a 10' x 14' room at best when its really cold outside.

I have a Seabreeze electric heater in the bathroom, so we don't freeze our asses off getting out of the shower in the winter. This heater claims to be 5K BTU's on HI. My bathroom is 5' x 10', & it still takes a full 15 minutes to warm it up. I couldn't imagine trying to use this thing to heat any part of the house. Talk about a waste of electricity ... read: money.

I just took it apart for cleaning for the first time in 3 years. It's amazing the amount of crap that builds up in there. Talk about a fire hazard! Especially with a plastic housing.

Had to balance the fan again after cleaning too. Already had to do that when it was new. Let me tell ya .... those coils bite hard when you forget it's plugged in! I got lit up pretty good ...

SMITTY wrote: those coils bite hard when you forget it's plugged in! I got lit up pretty good ...

HAHAHAHA I think I pissed my pants sorry smitty haha

It's all good.

I think I might have too when that current was flowing through my wrist ...

SMITTY wrote:I have a Seabreeze electric heater in the bathroom, so we don't freeze our asses off getting out of the shower in the winter. This heater claims to be 5K BTU's on HI. My bathroom is 5' x 10', & it still takes a full 15 minutes to warm it up. I couldn't imagine trying to use this thing to heat any part of the house.

What these are good for is if you have electric/oil heat and no zone control. You could turn the thermostat way down in the rest of the house and just use it to supplement one area. I wouldn't buy the $300 model but instead opt for the less than $100 model with a fan that will do the same thing. When you see the picture of the room comparing the heat distribution of a infrared heater to standard electric heater I'll guarantee they are not utilizing an element heater with a fan.

The bottom line is If you're using coal or natural gas which is very cheap right now it's really pointless because you could heat many rooms if not a small house for the same cost.

Richard S. wrote:I wouldn't buy the $300 model but instead opt for the less than $100 model with a fan that will do the same thing.

I have seen this statement, and statements to this effect, made many times in discussions about infrared heating. What I have never seen is this statement made by somebody who has actually tried an infrared heater vs. a standard space heater. Those that I've run across who have tried it speak almost unanimously in favor of infrared. Take the case of anthony7812. Do you think a $100 heater would have adequately supplemented his forced-air system for 900 square feet? The oft-quoted laws about BTU's say that no heater of 1500 watts or less could come close. Yet it worked for him to keep the floor warm and help his furnace run less. (Not to mention reducing the risk of burning his house down with one of those $100 heaters.) This also describes the situation in which I've used one, with excellent effect.

As I like to say, the laws of thermodynamics say infrared heating can't work - but then again, the laws of aerodynamics say a bumblebee can't fly.

Ozarks wrote: I have seen this statement, and statements to this effect, made many times in discussions about infrared heating.

If you wanted to convince me........

1. Buy a non infrared heater with the same wattage and fan with the same cfm rating.
2. Provide independent analysis using flir camera in same room with both heaters which is commonly used to show how superior these units supposedly are.

I won't hold my breath. As I said before you've come to the wrong place to argue about heat distribution, a BTU is a BTU is a BTU.... The only improvement that can be made on that heat is how it's distributed. Two electric heaters using the same wattage but different methods are going to consume the same amount of electric and produce the exact same BTU's. The cost is the same and the BTU output is the same. The only variable is how well that heat gets distributed, with the same size fan to distribute that heat around the room is going to give equal results.

About the only valid point you may have is the safety but for $300 I can go buy a few 1500 watt hydronic baseboard electric heaters.... same BTU's per unit except I get 2 or 3 of them.

just as a follow-up from stating my square footage of my last house, I was only heating the downstairs area which say was prolly around 400/450 sqft. Upstairs stayed cool with being able to turn the thermo down. I ran the ep heater somewhere on the 3/4 to 1/2 power range and kept the downstairs comfortable. Would I buy another one prolly not.. but am I happy with what I needed it for at that time ..yes.

Richard S. wrote:If you wanted to convince me........

My goal really isn't to convince anybody, but only to contribute balancing, experience-based information for the reference of those who read this thread.

I too would love to see a truly scientific analysis of infrared vs. standard space heaters. Unfortunately, there isn't one that I know of. When you do find an "analysis," it's typically either a vendor infomerical in disguise, or else it's just somebody with a calculator and a copy of the laws of thermodynamics saying it can't possibly work.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Infrared heating is not magic, and it's not for everyone. It's just one tool among many that you can use in your overall heating strategy. For some situations it makes a lot of sense; for others, not so much.

anthony7812 wrote:just as a follow-up from stating my square footage of my last house, I was only heating the downstairs area which say was prolly around 400/450 sqft. Upstairs stayed cool with being able to turn the thermo down. I ran the ep heater somewhere on the 3/4 to 1/2 power range and kept the downstairs comfortable. Would I buy another one prolly not.. but am I happy with what I needed it for at that time ..yes.

Even 400-450 square feet is about 2-3 times what a 1500W space heater is supposed to be able to handle - and I take it you weren't even running the heater on full power. This is exactly the kind of case I'm talking about. The numbers don't add up, but the user experience does.

Ozarks wrote:Even 400-450 square feet is about 2-3 times what a 1500W space heater is supposed to be able to handle - and I take it you weren't even running the heater on full power. This is exactly the kind of case I'm talking about. The numbers don't add up, but the user experience does.

I think it matters much as to what the outside temperature is. The figures I provided earlier are valid requirements for the very coldest few days of the year. If it is below zero degrees F. outside all day you won't be able to "comfortably" heat much more than a single 10' x 14' room in an old house with a 5,000 Watt heat source of any type, unless perhaps the room being heated has no walls that are in direct contact with the outside.

If you have a 100,000 BTU output furnace or boiler, on any normal (as in average) winter day it is probably not putting out much more than 20,000 - 25,000 BTU's of heat per hour (as measured on average over 24 hours) in order to comfortably heat the entire house. On an average winter day 4 or 5 Edenpure heaters may well heat an entire house. But if it is properly sized for the home your 100,000 BTU furnace or boiler will be putting out much closer to its full 100,000 BTU output rating every hour on end when the high for the day hits only about -5 degrees F. or less. On a seriously cold day like that it might take 20 Edenpures cranking full out to keep the entire house toasty warm. The problem here is that many older houses have only 100 AMP service, and even most all electric homes rarely have more than 200 AMP service. 20 Edenpures each pulling 12 amps would result in a total draw of 240 amps of current.

To put this into some sort of perspective, 20,000 to 25,000 BTU's of heat per hour on average for 24 hours requires roughly 50 to 60 lbs of anthracite coal.