Blue Flame vs Infrared
I am adding a heater to our home to have in addition to the furnace. I am looking at the thermablaster 10,000 Btu wall mount. Since we are hearing 440sf this should be enough... I think. I am debat...
Forum Discussion
Sam Spade wrote:
Heat is heat. It's natural flow is UP.
Yeah, provided we are talking about hot AIR.
Here's the thing about blue flame vs. infrared heaters. The former heat the air, but the latter send most of their heat out in the form of infrared LIGHT, very little heats the air directly. The infrared heaters make room occupants feel warmer than they otherwise would, and eventually heat the walls, ceiling, floor, and furniture surfaces. As a result, if you are counting on the heater to warm folks in the next room, blue flame is your choice. If you are only planning to heat people in the same room, infrared is probably a better bet.
A blue flame heater heats the air, the warm air goes up, and spreads across the ceiling. As it does so, it cools down, and in an RV, which is typically poorly insulated, you wind up mostly heating the great outdoors.
If you are talking about LP gas heaters, vented is a very much better choice for RV use because it will not add moisture to the air, nor create as much risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, nor deplete the oxygen. If you go with unvented, you MUST crack a couple windows (thus making it behave like a vented heater) to avoid those problems, which it must be noted can kill you.
