Electric Baseboard Heaters

There are a couple of reasons that people consider getting additional heating units for their homes. One reason may be that the older home's whole-house furnace just isn't doing the job well enough. Some rooms may be chilly on colder days, no matter how high you turn the thermostat. Another reason is that some people don't like to waste all the energy it takes to heat a whole house when only a few rooms are being occupied. They want to be more green-minded, or else they are conscious of the financial expense of constantly running the furnace when a few well-placed electric baseboard heaters could to the job at a lower cost.

Especially if you have small children or elderly people living in your household, you need to make sure that you have the occupied rooms at a reasonable temperature. If you keep the thermostat too low, you are asking for an increase in the common cold and other illnesses. Electric baseboard heaters are an excellent way to keep your rooms warm.

Electric baseboard heaters are simple to describe. They are usually fairly wide, but shallow and are perfect for installation along the baseboard in any room. Because they don't add to the bulk of the room, they are a good choice for a small room. A space heater may be more portable, but it usually takes up some space. The baseboard models simply blend in against the wall and you hardly even know that they are there. Often, there are two heating levels available with the built-in thermostat. The thermostat can be set at a constant level to keep a room warm, and each one can easily handle warming a room up to about 150 square feet. For a larger area, you can simply install more than one unit. Each unit measures up to about 28 inches, so you can easily find wall space along the baseboards for installation.

It is easy to understand how electric baseboard heaters work. The electricity sends power to the heating element which warms the air that passes through it. The element can be of aluminum, which both heats up and cools down quickly, or stainless steel, which both heats up and cools down slowly. The air is then circulated through convection. Placing the heaters near the window or other areas where the air naturally flows in is preferable. The convection style of heater makes it very quiet, so it is an excellent choice to warm a bedroom.

If you are trying to save energy, remember that it takes almost twice as much energy to warm up a cold room than it does to maintain a reasonably warm temperature. This means that when you are sleeping at night, you turn the thermostat down to a reasonable level, and the turn it up again in the morning when you will be using the room again. The same principle goes for a time when you are not at home. You might leave the thermostat at a reasonable sixty degrees or so, and then increase the temperature when you arrive back at home. If you are in the market for some extra heating system for your house, you should think about electric baseboard heaters.