Wall-Mounted Heaters: Big Heat in a Little Package
Mar 09 '02 (Updated Mar 13 '02)
The Bottom Line Wall-mounted electric heaters provide safe, instant, easy-to-control heat, and can be perfect for a variety of areas around the home.
If there's an area of your home that's always a little too cold, or isn't served by your main heating system, a wall-mounted electric heater may be just the ticket to make the area more useful and comfortable. Wall-mounted heaters can also be great in entry ways, vestibules, mud rooms, or similar areas, where they can provide a "barrier" between the cold outdoors and the warm house. Used in these areas, wall-mounted heaters can also speed the drying of boots and coats often placed in those rooms.
People faced with the need for extra heat -- and a need or desire to use electricity as a fuel source -- typically consider three major space heating options: baseboard heaters, portable space heaters, or wall-mounted heaters. How do you decide which is best?
BASEBOARD
Baseboard heaters are probably the most common choice. They are virtually silent, provide even heat, and mount unobtrusively along an exterior wall. However, there are situations where baseboard heaters are not ideal. First of all, there may not be enough exterior wall space to allow installation of a sufficient quantity of baseboard heater wattage. Normal baseboard heaters produce 250 watts of heat for each foot of their length, so a room that needs 2000 watts of heat would require a single baseboard heater 8 feet long, or multiple heaters having a total length of 8 feet. Another potential problem with baseboard heaters is that if wall insulation is not up to current standards, as it usually isn't in old houses, there can be a high level of heat loss through the back of the baseboard heater through the wall. Also, in areas with a ceiling higher than 10 feet, baseboard heaters may not be the best choice.
PORTABLES
Portable heaters are always an option, and I have several other Epinions articles focusing on various types of portable heaters. They are an excellent alternative when the need for heat is not continuous, or there is a need to move the heater from place to place. However, they must be plugged into standard wall outlets, so they consume not only an outlet space but also the lion's share of the total current available on a household circuit. Their current draw is typically over 12 amps, and a standard household circuit only has 15 or 20 amps available on it. Also, if children or pets are around, there is always the risk of a portable heater being accidentally knocked over, covered up, or misused in some other way to create a hazard. Finally, portable electric heaters are limited by the electrical code to a maximum of 1500 watts, which may not be enough for large rooms or areas.
WALL-MOUNTED HEATERS
Wall heaters can help people for whom baseboard heaters or portable models are not suitable. One big advantage they offer is fast heat delivery. Compared to baseboard heaters and other heaters using "natural" convection or airflow, a fan-forced wall-mounted heater can take the chill off a room much more quickly.
As their name implies, a wall-mounted heater is mounted either in the wall, so that its exterior grill is essentially flush with the wall itself, or on the surface of the wall, so that the heater and its housing protrude three to six inches from the wall itself. Obviously, in-wall mounting is somewhat more attractive, but the option of surface mounting is very good for people who may want a wall-mounted heater in a basement with concrete walls, or anywhere that it's not suitable to cut a hole in the wall and recess the heater in it.
HOW BIG A HEATER DO YOU NEED?
A rough rule of thumb for electric heating states that, in general, a reasonably well insulated area with an average number of windows and doors will require 10 watts per square foot of heated area. If you know that the area tends to be cold, you can bump this up to 15 watts per square foot, while 8 watts per square foot may be enough in a really well insulated room, or in a mild area of the country. Unlike many other methods of heating, there is really no efficiency penalty for installing slightly more wattage of electric heat than you need. If you do that, the heater will simply not run as much.
Using the 10 watts per square foot figure, a 12 x 20 foot room (240 square feet) would require roughly 2,400 watts of electric heat.
One special circumstance: If the area to be heated is a bathroom, install a minimum of 1,000 watts, even if the square footage of the room suggests you could do with less. This is because people usually like a bathroom to be warmer than other rooms, and because someone taking a shower will enjoy having a flow of nice, warm air on them after they get out. Heaters below 1,000 watts often produce air that feels more or less lukewarm.
HEAT DELIVERY METHOD
The vast majority of wall-mounted heaters are known as "fan-coil" units, which means that they consist basically of a fan and a heating coil or coils. However, there are a few models that have no fan and have heating elements that glow red-orange to produce radiant heat. The fan-coil models should be your choice unless you are using the heater in a bathroom or in some other location where people will be directly in front of the heater.
Moreover, many people still prefer fan-coil heaters even in areas where radiant models could theoretically be used, because placement of a radiant model is so critical: If you change the arrangement of a room, a radiant heater might be rendered less effective.
CONTROLS
Some wall heaters have integral thermostats and controls, while others require the use of an external thermostat. While external thermostats are a little more trouble to install, they may provide a little more accurate control of the room temperature. However, with a little experimentation, I have found that even heater-mounted thermostats can give pretty accurate control of room temperature in most cases.
Many heaters of this type do not have thermostats calibrated in degrees, but use arbitrary numbers or a "hot - cold" scale. The only reason they do not have traditional degree-calibrated thermostats is because the temperature at the heater may not be the same as elsewhere in the room.
However, regardless of the lack of degree markings, these thermostats can provide good temperature control if you simply turn them all the way toward "hot" when first starting the heater, and then when the room reaches a comfortable temperature, rotate them back toward "cool" until the heater cycles off. In this way you have "pre-set" the heater to maintain that comfortable temperature.
Some models also have variable wattage controls, which let you set the heater on a "high" or "low" setting to vary the temperature of the air based on heating needs. This is a nice feature, but it will not as some believe cut power usage: If you select a "low" setting, the thermostat will just keep the heater running longer to reach the pre-set temperature. The only real advantage of selecting a "low" setting is that the heater will run a higher percentage of the time, which may increase comfort by reducing variations in room temperature.
120 VOLT OR 240 VOLT
In the above example of heater sizing, a 240 square foot room had a heat need of 2400 watts. If that were the room you were purchasing a heater for, you would have no choice other than to use a 240 volt heater, since 120 volt heaters are limited by the electrical code to 1500 watts.
Overall, there is little reason to use a 120 volt heater, unless your house simply does not have 240 volt service. With the 240 volt models, you can use more wattage on each circuit (3840 watts on a 20 amp circuit, 5760 on a 30 amp circuit), and you can also use smaller wires for any given wattage than you could use with 120 volt models.
However, it is a myth that 240 volt heaters consume less power or cost less to run than 120 volt heaters. The amperage rating of a 240 volt heater is half that of a 120 volt heater having the same wattage, but you do not pay for amps -- you pay for watts. Therefore, there is no difference in operating costs for 240 volt versus 120 volt electric heaters.
SELECTION and MODELS
Many wall-mounted heaters are available with decorative grills that resemble the heat registers of a standard forced-air heating system. As such, they can blend into a room's decor well and be a very attractive heating option. Be sure to shop around and see models available from many different manufacturers to find one that suits the area in which you plan to install it.
Wall-mounted heaters intended for home use are usually available in wattages ranging from 500 to 4,000. This is not a serious limitation; if you have an area which is too big for a 4,000 watt heater, it's probably preferable to use more than one heater anyhow, so you'll have better heat distribution.
INSTALLATION
Take some time to look around the room or area you want to heat to decide on the best wall placement. Check the instructions for the specific heater you purchase, but normally you want to mount a wall heater one- to two-feet above the floor, on an interior wall, toward the center of the area to be heated. Make certain that there are no other walls or objects in front of the heater -- the air needs an unobstructed path to the area you want to heat if the heater is to operate efficiently and safely.
Wall-mounted heaters are to be mounted on interior walls to minimize heat losses. Also, there will usually be insulation in an exterior wall that could get in the way of mounting the heater or pose a safety problem if it came to rest against the heater's housing. If you must mount a heater on an exterior wall, check with the manufacturer for any specific modifications you might have to make to the installation procedure.
Installing a wall-mounted heater is not difficult if you aren't afraid to cut a hole in your wall and do some wiring work. However, if you have any doubts about either, contact a professional electrician. Installing a wall-mounted heater would not in most cases be an expensive or difficult job for a pro to complete.
MAINTENANCE
One of the real luxuries of electric heat is that it's essentially maintenance free. Normally all you need to do to take care of a wall-mounted heater is occasionally vacuum dust off the exterior of the grill to ensure that there is good aiflow through the heater.
(Do not allow parts of the vacuum cleaner to enter into the heater in an attempt to clean better. If you ever notice that there is a considerable amount of dust inside the heater that simple external vacuuming will not remove, go first to your home's breaker/fuse panel and shut off power to the heater. Then you can remove the grill and clean inside the heater, being careful not to damage the fan or heating elements. If you have any worries whatsoever that the power might not be off, or are uncomfortable in any way doing this, DO NOT remove the heater's grill. Enlist the help of someone who can verify that power is off.)
DAY-TO-DAY OPERATION
The nice thing about a typical fan-forced, wall-mounted heater is that it can warm a room very quickly -- much faster, in fact, than a baseboard heater of the same wattage. Therefore, it can be a real energy saver to turn these heaters down if they are located in unused areas, and then turn them up again once people are in the room.
Whether you have a new addition you need to heat, or want some extra warmth in an entry area or other room, a wall-mounted heater can be an excellent option.
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cowboyind
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