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as far as I can tell, Eden Pure heaters are really no different than Ceramic disk heaters.
Eden Pure does have a great advertising program though. They compare their heaters to the old hot wire toaster style heaters that are now hard to find and stupid to use. I think that if you were to compare a $400 plus edenpure to a $50 ceramic disc heater, you woudl find that they offer the same safety, heating capacity, etc. The cheaper heaters do not look as nice, but they are pretty much the same. Neither one has any surfaces that will start a fire. The same is true withthe oil filled radiator heaters but they do nto have a fan. If a modern heater is going to start a fire it will be fromt eh wiring, or too much plugged into one outlet etc. Almost none of them have any heating element that will ignite a piece of paper or clothing it they touch the heater element.
We once heated our whole house with those little ceramic disc space heaters and we now have an Edenpure. Eden pure has a larger box, looks nicer and costs more. Otherwise, it seems about the same. The law limits how powerful a heater can be (I think 1800 watts is the limit) so you cannot get one more powerful than others.
1.) inefficient
2.) main one did not pass inspection (leaky, and is ruining the carpet below it because it is installed too low. Why fix it? why not get something better?)
3.) No heat to other rooms. This is a problem because:
a.) kids get cold in their rooms
b.) we won't live here forever, we need it in better shape for resale (the house wouldn't qualify for certain kinds of loans)
I don't know how many amps the house has, we're having an electrician over sometime soon to answer some questions like that for us.
We have natural gas and electricity. I've only just moved here so I really don't know the rates compared to others (we did not pay utilities at our previous location), but our first electric bill was just over a dollar a day, and our gas was almost 3x that. (we also have a gas range and gas water heater, which I also have complaints about but that's for a different thread, haha)
I started another thread about the hydro-sil and "cove" heaters, no one's answered it yet though. I'd never heard of all these different options before I had to actually look for heat, haha. Lots of choices, but at the same time it seems like none are right!
Last edited by campmom123; 02-03-2010 at 05:41 PM..
Natural gas is usually cheaper than electric but it depends on the rates. I have comparison calculator here, just input the local rates you have and it will give cost comparison.
If you know what efficiency of the gas unit is be sure to input that and you'll get a fair estimate. Electric is considered 100% efficient but that doesn't necessarily mean it's cheaper because it cost a lot more per BTU in most areas.
thanks everyone for answering my questions. We are in Wyoming, to give you a bit more background.
The house is 1100 square feet. No way would I buy 10 eden pures or anything else, there are only 2 wall heaters heating the whole house right now-- One in the living room and one in the garage-conversion bedroom.
I would never use just regular space heaters for primary heat (although I have had to do this for a time once), not only would the electric bill be too high but the fire hazard, esp with small kids around.... that's why we were drawn to the EdenPure, since it doesn't get hot to the touch or catch on fire. Right now, since I like to turn the main heat down at night, and the main wall heater in the living room doesn't get to the kids' 2 bedrooms that well anyway, we use small electric space heaters in their bedrooms at night and I hate it! Scares me so bad! but we don't really have an option without putting forced air or some sort of baseboard in there.
Even with doing the kids' space heaters every night, the electric bill is small compared to the gas bill for the wall heaters. Do you think a new efficient forced air set up would be cheaper? But the upfront cost is still an issue.
We got a quote for staple up hot water heat, $18,000!!!! No way this little old house is worth putting that much into.
Any better ideas?
I've lived in homes with gas floor furnaces and wall furnaces... never had any problems other than the floor furnace grate would get hot when used a lot...
I'm certain he least expensive route is to repair what you have as long as the heat exchanger is OK.
The second least expensive way is to replace one or both with another gas wall furnace... they are not very expensive to buy and the gas piping and vents are already in place.
Third is to install electric base board heating if initial cost is the problem... they don't cost much to install, only to operate.
Fourth would be to install central heat and air... probably around $3000 for materials plus labor... at least that is what my brother spent and my labor was free.
$3000 was about what we guessed too, for parts. My husband can install it himself, but prefers not to. That's where the cost comes in and we're trying to figure out if it's worth it for the sake of our sanities. Or if we even prefer forced air or if there's something better out there
I know we could replace/fix the existing wall heaters, but we still need to get heat into the kids rooms and other rooms, 1. for our comfort and 2. for resale. We could just throw something electric in there, I know. But I'd like to try and have the whole house sorta "go together" in some way and not have it look like an afterthought, if that makes sense.
We'll keep working on it, weighing the pros and cons of different ideas...
$3000 was about what we guessed too, for parts. My husband can install it himself, but prefers not to. That's where the cost comes in and we're trying to figure out if it's worth it for the sake of our sanities. Or if we even prefer forced air or if there's something better out there
I know we could replace/fix the existing wall heaters, but we still need to get heat into the kids rooms and other rooms, 1. for our comfort and 2. for resale. We could just throw something electric in there, I know. But I'd like to try and have the whole house sorta "go together" in some way and not have it look like an afterthought, if that makes sense.
We'll keep working on it, weighing the pros and cons of different ideas...
What do similar homes in your area use for heat?
Living in a home with a single floor furnace... it only took the first cold snap to learn to keep all the doors open if you wanted heat... kind of the same for those that heat with a wood stove.
The absolute best heat I have ever experienced are family members living in snow country with radiant floor heat... the bath is always warm as is the rest of the home... they all built their homes as forever homes...
other homes in the area have the same (wall heater or single floor furnace), or have converted to forced air or hot water baseboard. This house sat on the market for quite a while and I think the heat was one of the big reasons. I don't want to re-do that when we sell it.
We can (and often do) open the kids doors at night, but not until we're ready to go to bed. If we want to watch a movie, they can hear it. And when we have guests, everybody likes to sleep with their doors shut. We're all used to sleeping with the doors shut, but I guess I can change
Still think we need some at least back-up heat in there though.
Yes, radiant floor heat is awesome. Too expensive to install in this already built house though.
campmom, just a thought but have you thought of register-style electric heaters? It would call for some remodeling (cutting a hole for the heater and running wiring to it) but it may be an option. They are fairly effective, not sure about leaving them on while on vacation though.
Thanks for the posts. I ordered the Eden Pure because I have used the oil heaters (the ones that look like old radiators) and they heat nicely as area heaters, but the switches on most of the brands go bad if you use them (to adjust temperature) within 2 years and I have been through about 8 of them in the past 10 years simply because of broken switches. The Eden Pure ad on TV was misleading because it stated an initial payment of $39.95 and then 4 additional payments, neglecting to say that the 4 additional payments were for $80 each.
I will probably send it back because it is too expensive, but am disappointed in the oil heaters. I like their relative safety, but the switches are trash and I don't know how to replace them.
For those looking at other sources of heat, I was using propane at the farm where I live and still have it as an alternate heat source, but use a wood pellet stove to heat my house. It is not a ducted system but simply blows the air out of the convection tubes and my house is all on one level, but works well. It burns 97% clean so that a 40 lb. bag of pellets leaves about 1/2 cup of ash and is easy to clean. My heating bills for a moderate winter in GA were $400 to $600 a month with propane. With the stove, my whole winter (and I like my house warm) was only $600 - $800. The stove paid for itself in about 2 1/2 years. You must have storage space for the pellets which run around $275 - $325 a ton for 40 bags, but there is a thermostat on the wall just like a regular heater, and I enjoy watching the fire. In the South (GA), I find it is hard to locate people to work on the stove. Most of the problems have been very simple and I have been using it for around 5 or 6 years now, but even a simple problem can be hard to solve if no one knows anything about pellet stoves.
You can't really compare wood pellet to propane or piped natural gas or electricity. You need a "store house" for pellets while even the propane can be delivered / refilled in an unattended manner.
Cost wise I suppose you could have lower fuel costs in a mild climate / small house with wood pellets, but temps in someplace like Wyoming or Montana or van the upper midwest would see you going through so much wood that I can't imagine how you could manage...
In places with very low electric rates maybe you could get by with baseboard heaters, but any sort of non- hardwired 220 volt units are going to have such short lifespan that would be a negative.
Space heaters, of any kind, from permantely installed gas units to portable electric devices, are just not an acceptable alternative to having central heat. If the cost of a nice forced air or hydronic system is too much of a budget buster maybe you ought not be a homeowner. Landlords probably could get away with renting out a place w/o central heat...
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I have ordered Eden Pure
