Best Oil-filled Heaters | 2022 Beneficial Buyer’s Guide

Winter isn’t far away, and while the area in which I live has mild winters to say the least, even here it can get chilly enough to need some heat. There are a whole host of technologies that can be employed to generate heat, so you’re left with quite a variety of choices at the end of the day, so it can seem like a bit of a hassle to figure out which approach is right for you.

Today, we’re going to talk about oil heaters, which again, does span the gamut of both “heater oil” and kerosene, with the latter being the more common. In fact, these two fuel sources are more or less interchangeable to a degree, with many heaters being able to deal with them both. Kerosene is actually a bit more volatile, though, so you will want to be sure your heater is rated to handle something this refined, but we’ll get into that.

What we’re talking about today, though, isn’t an oil-burning heater, but rather an oil-filled heater, which is a very different kind of technology. Yeah, this may feel like a little bit of a fake-out to you initially, but I wanted to discuss traditional oil heaters first, so when I pointed the difference out, you’d see why these oil-filled ones are different.

What are they? Well, they’re basically portable electric radiators. They don’t use steam nor compressed hot air pumped into them from a central line, but rather heated oil pumped into radiator pipes, which then heats the air around them. Some of them also have a mild blower fan to move the air more quickly.

These are electric-powered, which has its disadvantages compared to oil-burning heaters, as we’ll see in a moment.

So, I said we’d touch on some of the limits and disadvantages to these, but there are advantages as well. First, let’s touch on the benefits.

One benefit of this type of heater is it’s almost entirely free of fire risks if you use it properly. The oil could cause injuries if you were exposed to it when heated, which is call for being absolutely certain you watch the pressure, and keep an eye on the integrity, but accidents like this are rare.

This is, again, the safest approach to electric heating, as no red hot elements nor ceramics are present to start fires nor spark. Being portable and simple, they’re very convenient and suitable for just about any kind of environment, with exceptions where the room is entirely too big for something like this.

Cons are the aforementioned volume primarily. These heaters aren’t made to heat gigantic rooms, so if you want to do so, you may find yourself needing multiple heaters, and this brings back the problem of electricity still being somewhat inefficient as I said in the opening of this piece. However, with heaters like this that just use thermal radiation, it’s more efficient than in other cases.

The problem behind their electric nature really shows in that infrastructure versus harsh winter thing I mentioned. See, winters in the north and in the Midwest do have the occasional (or frequent depending on where you are) tendency to knock power out. Combustion heat works fine in light of this, but if you’re depending on electricity, you may have a problem. You’ll need a generator to stand up to this kind of problem, which can be a whole set of problems itself, and we’ll probably look at generators at some point – we need them down here often enough due to hurricanes being a menace to modern electric living.

These are really the only problems these have, and their safety, simplicity and portability make up for it in many cases.

So, when are these the most called for to use? Well, let’s look at a few cases.

• Heating an attic or basement when it’s exceptionally cold can be easily done with one of these heaters, and safely at that.
• Heating a smaller garage can be effectively done with one of these as well.
• Heating a guest house or shed are often done with these if it’s to be a temporary situation.
• Small workshops are sometimes heated with these.
• These make for good emergency heaters in the event central heat fails or you run out of fuel before your tanks can be refilled. No need to freeze while waiting for the gas man!