Blue Flame vs Infrared

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.

Infra-red heaters (gas and electric) heat the objects in front of the the heater with a little convection heat above it. Blue flame heaters are mostly convection heat with a little radiant heat in front and work better with a blower. On all UNVENTED GAS appliances (even catalytics) one of the products of combustion is water, Your range and oven are no different. If you put a big heater in a small space you may get rain or streaking on cold surfaces. I recommend cracking a window.

ralphnjoann wrote:
I'm a little confused here (not unusual). An infrared heater is electric and a blue flame heater is gas. Are you asking about electric vs gas, or gas convection vs gas radiant (blue flame vs brick)?

There are catalytic gas infrared heaters.
They should use slightly less gas and therefore not produce quite as much moisture.
However, using any kind of unvented gas heater is NOT a good idea.

If you are going to use gas, what is wrong with your built-in gas furnace ? Assuming that you have one, that is.

MandMkuzie wrote:
The units are ventless... and question for the infrared... will the heat spread throughout or be concentrated in the room the heater is located in?

Heat is heat. It's natural flow is UP.

It likely will overheat the room it's in and not do much for the others.......without some kind of fan to circulate the air.
That is with any kind of heater.

Then don't get either of them.

MandMkuzie wrote:
The units are ventless

I'm a little confused here (not unusual). An infrared heater is electric and a blue flame heater is gas. Are you asking about electric vs gas, or gas convection vs gas radiant (blue flame vs brick)?

The units are ventless... and question for the infrared... will the heat spread throughout or be concentrated in the room the heater is located in?

Make sure to get a unit that is vented to the outside of the RV.

We put in a blue flame, before we went to Alaska one summer, and with the humidity and cold it had water running down the walls, in the cabinets, and everywhere. It took us the whole four months to figure out that was the cause. It was pretty, like a fireplace. We went back to the Olympian and solved the problem. I think that in a place like Arizona they would be great.

Mike

I had both. We liked the infrared much better than the blue flame.

To me infrared seemed to heat better. And, I liked the glow of the hot bricks. :)

If I bought another gas heater, I wouldn't consider the blue flame.