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Recently, I bought and reviewed the the Holmes HCH6150-U Ceramic Compact Heater

( http://www.epinions.com/content_279579561604 )and found it to be a great unit to heat up any part of your home or office. It does a fine job heating the small building near my house I use as an office, even when the temperature dips down into the 20s or below.

I was so impressed with the big unit that I got a smaller version, the Holmes Products Familysafe HFH5717 Heater Fan for use inside my home. As I did with the larger one, I bought this heater at the Ace Hardware Store and, just like the other one, though smaller, it works like a charm. Only it is more domesticated: it has some safety features that make it even a better choice for use around people and pets.

As with its ‘big brother’ Holmes heater I had purchased earlier, along with its high heat efficiency, the remarkable thing about this space heater is its modern array of safety and convenience features, the like of which I have never seen on a unit of its type. I am greatly impressed with how far these kinds of units have come in the last few years.

As I noted in my earlier review, Holmes Products make several dozen types of similar heaters, and this is but one of their offerings, so I know I have probably purchased a product from a safe and reliable company or they wouldn’t be marketing all these different types of units. Holmes claims to have over 20 years experience developing, engineering, and testing these heaters. I was also (again) swayed to buy the unit from Ace because the majority of products I have purchased from their stores are top-of-the-line, so that added to the credibility of the heater.

This is a relatively small space-heater that stands just over a foot tall. It runs on 1500 Watts and it uses standard USA 120 Volts AC current. It has a curved front and has a small footprint on the floor.

The primary selling point is how safe it is to use. It has a continuous self-checking panel on top which does not stop testing every safety device in the heater and which continuously shows you what is happening to these features. This, of course, gives you the security of knowing that they are all functioning normally.

Along with this, the heater has an ‘Invisible Contact Sensor’ which shuts off the heater if a passing person, pet, or anything else in close proximity interrupts an infrared beam, preventing burns and other hazards. This works similarly to the safety-cutoff beam system now mandated for the installation of electric garage-doors.

It also cuts off if it is accidentally tipped over, a nice touch indeed if small children, a pet, or a careless adult should move hard against it.

Should the unit overheat, it will cut off through its auto-safety features, and then the heater must be reset. You turn the heat control to ‘off’, then you must unplug the heater and wait 30 minutes. After that you may plug in the heater and turn it on again.

In a very unusual case where the heater does not respond to an overheating situation, it comes with a safety backup fuse. The fuse shuts off the heater, and a trouble-light with an icon alerts the user to the problem, and the unit will not function without replacement of the fuse. In extreme situations, this could be a critical safety function.

As to the main controls, there is of course a manual on-off switch, and a 4-hour safety timer with an LED light, which is activated whenever the unit is turned on. After 4 hours, the unit automatically shuts off, which is a nice feature if anyone accidentally forgets to shut it off. There is a manual switch to turn the timer off if that is needed. To turn the unit back on after the timer has shut the unit down, you simply switch it back on again.

There is no thermostat, but in most of the situations where such a small heater as this might be used, this is a small concession. If you need a heater with a thermostat, such as the HCH6150, these can be purchased, yet for the applications where you would need a heater such as this, you probably will not need one. I look on it as one less thing to mess with.

The housing, as on the HCH6150, is made of plastic. I have always had a mistrust of plastic things around high heat, but the engineers who made this apparently know what they are doing or they would not be marketing it. This type of plastic is called “Flame Resistant V-2 Rated.” One of the main advantages of this type of housing is that it is cool to the touch and will not burn you if you rub up against it or move the heater.

So how well does it work in operation? If you are in a house where you want to heat a small area and do not wish to turn up the furnace to heat the whole house, it seems to work efficiently. We use it to supply heat to a bathroom with no bathroom heater, and this works well except you have to be cautious to keep it far back away from water just as you should do with any electrical appliance to avoid shock hazards. We heat the bathroom, turn it off, then take a bath or shower, turn it on again, and it works just fine. I really like the standard safety features and especially that auto-shutoff timer. We replaced our electric coffee pot with one with an auto-shutoff timer not long back, and the peace of mind this gives is very nice indeed whenever you can do that with something electrical.

If you need a small space heater that is about as safe they make them, is reliable, and really puts out the heat, this is a good choice.

Five Stars/*****

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