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Lakewood Economy Radiant LAK-205 Coil / Ribbon Mid-Size Heater Key FeaturesType Mid-SizePower Source ElectricHeating Element Coil / RibbonFeatures Thermosta...

For a Few Dollars , Big Heat More ! - Lakewood Economy Radiant LAK-205 Coil / Ribbon Mid-Size Heater My wife and I moved in May 2007 to a newly-built home located in one of the desert cities of Southern California. ...

The Lakewood radiant heater, model 205, is a great way to warm up without spending a fortune on energy, and it is more suitable than many other models for homes with older wiring.

This heater is housed in an attractive white cabinet and includes a thermostat for automatic operation. When the heater is turned on, the elements glow orange-red, and the radiant heat quickly warms people and objects near the heater. This heat is eventually spread into the room air through convection, so the overall temperature of the room does go up, but people near the heater become much more comfortable long before this has time to occur, because the radiant heat warms the body directly just like the warmth of the sunshine.

This fact is a key reason why this radiant heater can be an energy saving device. With radiant heat, people are comfortable even though the thermostat is set lower. If you can set your home’s heat at 65 rather than 70 and use a radiant heater while you are sitting and watching TV, using the computer or whatever, the cost savings can be significant.

To give you an idea of operating costs, if you were to use this heater constantly for 3 hours per day every single day for a month, and you pay the national average electric rate of about 8 cents per kilowatt hour, this heater would add about $9.50 to your electric bill. It would be conceivable to save many times that much by lowering the whole house thermostat setting a little and using this heater to make the area where you are more comfortable. This is especially true in light of rapidly increasing natural gas rates.

The thermostat on this heater is helpful, as it can control the operation time and keep energy costs down. Unlike the thermostats on many small portable heaters, this one is fairly effective, cycling the heater on and off periodically but not so frequently that the constant turning on and off becomes annoying.

The heater’s housing is metal - sturdily constructed and well assembled. In my opinion this gives it an extra margin of safety over a heater constructed of plastic, which could become weak or even melt if the unit were to overheat for some reason.

The heater also operates very quietly. If there is any other noise at all in the room, it is essentially silent.

Because this model draws 1320 watts rather than the typical 1500 watts that portable electric heaters consume, it is a much better choice than most other models for older homes with 15 amp circuit breakers or fuses rather than 20 amp circuits.

A 1500 watt heater run on a 15 amp circuit consumes almost all of the available amperage (about 12.5 out of 15), while this model consumes about 11 amps, leaving a little extra margin of safety. The small reduction in heating capacity represented by the slightly lower wattage is not really significant in terms of heating performance.

A radiant heater like this is great in a garage or workshop where you want heat right on you while you are there. Often these areas are too big and/or too cold to effectively heat anyhow, so what you really need is a warm spot to stand or sit while you work. This heater provides just that. Even at temperatures well below what would be tolerable normally, the heat of a radiant heater can keep a person very comfortable.

This leads to the only real downside of this model — the focused nature of the heat. The area near it is bound to be warmer than more distant areas. Convection heaters such as radiators or baseboard heaters provide more uniform heat to an entire room, but they take much longer to provide comfort than a radiant model.

The Lakewood Radiant Heater Model 205 is a well-built, effective radiant heater than can make your life a lot more comfortable as you deal with increased energy costs. It warms people directly and creates a feeling of warmth similar to sitting in the sunshine.

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