Heater recommendations?

I would like to be able to lower the heat at night and try to save some money on the electric bill. However, I don't want the boys' nursery to get too cold. We dress them in footed fleece sleepers now that winter is here but I don't think that would be enough if their room got down to 68 degrees (Fahrenheit), for example. So I am wondering if there is a heater that would be safe for their nursery. Features I would want:

* fairly small as it won't take much to heat their small nursery
* a thermostat would be nice (or at the very least a timer where it could run for an hour or so before turning off)
* doesn't get very hot to the touch
* doesn't beep every time it starts and shuts off (I have a tower heater that does that and it annoys the crap out of me)

We have this DeLohghi radiator heater in the basement, but its heavy and would be easy for them to tip it over on themselves. It's also hot to the touch though we could get around that by only turning it on when the boys are in their crib. But I think it would also get their room too toasty because I used it once in their nursery last winter and had it on the low setting and when I went in their nursery later that night it was like a sauna.

Anyway, I'm not sure there is such a heater that would meet my qualifications, and if there is it might be just as practical financially to continue to pay an extra $15-$20 more a month (give or take) to continue to run the central air heater at 72.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or comments!

 

Im glad you post this.. We too are trying to figure the same thing. we are doing what you all are doing with keeping the heat up a bit. we are also putting socks on their feet before we put on their footed pjs on.

 

Not sure what you keep your house at now. We keep ours at 70 and mine are comfy in fleece footies without an extra heater. We have two Holmes ceramic ones for our bathrooms (i hate being cold out of the shower) and they seem to drive up the electric bill more than they are worth it. You could also do 2 sets of Pjs, cotton then fleece and see if they tolerate 68/69 dressed like that.

 

We have been keeping our thermostat at 72-73, but the nursery is usually 2-3 degrees less than that. I don't know why it is so cold this winter, as it was actually one of the warmer rooms in years past. Since we have an electric blanket on our bed I would like to lower the house thermostat to 69 or 70, but I'm afraid the nursery would be 67 degrees in that case and I would worry that the boys might be a little uncomfortable in spite of wearing footed fleece sleepers.

I've been doing more research on Amazon looking for radiant heaters with a thermostat. A few years ago I bought this Optimus Infrared Quartz Radiant Heater for my cubicle at work (our building only allows quartz radiant heaters because they say they are one of the safest) and last year we ended up using it for bathing the boys. It doesn't have a true thermostat though, just a low and a high setting so it runs non-stop. But I love that it is totally silent. I came across this programmable outlet thermostat and I'm thinking about getting that gizmo which would allow the quartz radiant heater we already have to turn off and on based on temp. That thermostat gets great reviews.

From what I've read most ceramic space heaters with a fan and thermostat are rather loud when turning off and on (and I take no chances on noises waking up our boys ).

Another heater I read a lot of reviews about prior to finding that thermostat was the Dayton oil-filled space heater. For the most part it got good reviews for heating small rooms, is silent, doesn't take up much space, and only uses 400 watts. It also sells under the NewAir name brand.

 

I always dressed my kids in thermal pjs..and then put the fleece footed over it...kept them fine...I also used a heater in their room and shut it off when I went to bad.

 

How about a sleep sack over the footie pajamas? That way you'd have a layer of heated air trapped between the sleep sack and their PJs. We turn our heat down to 62 at night and my girls were fine with the footie PJs and sleep sack at that age.

 

Aren't sleepsacks around $20? And I figure we would need at least 4 of them (if not 6). And in that case we're looking at investing in $80 - $120 in sleepsacks. Plus our boys have never worn a sleepsack, so I'm not sure how they would like them. And last but not least, that is just one more thing to wrestle them into :lol: I would say 70% of the time we have to wrestle them into their nighttime sleeper and I'd like to make that process as painless as possible I do thank you for the suggestions thoug, but having never used sleepsacks I'm a little apprehensive about investing much money into those.

 

I think its more of a room problem than a heat problem. Maybe you could talk to the superviser about ways to make the apt more energy efficient. The windows may need new weather sealing. Black out curtains also help retain the heat. Might check to see when the last time the vents were cleaned too. I always ran my heat at 70 due to jessys heart issues. She still doesn't handle hot cold well.

 

I've long wanted to have our duct work inspected (because there are other cold rooms in our house too) but I'm afraid that they will find major problems and we'll have a $500 bill or something :lol: We don't rent so we can't push that cost off on a landlord or supervisor. As for the nursery there is only one window and it is covered by a Solar brand thermal room darkening curtain, with wood blinds behind it. I put my hand behind the curtain the other day and didn't detect a noticeable draft. I'll have to look into cleaning the vents to see if that will help any. In the meantime I bought that $35 programmable thermostat and plan to use it with our Optimus radiant space heater in the nursery.

 

Why would you need 4-6 sleepsacks? We have used them since the boys were born and have only ever had 2 at a time. Unless they pee through their diapers and jammies (a rare occurrence), then we just re-use every night and wash once a week. THIS is the kind we used last winter, and they held up great! :good:

 

[quote name='Nate and Jack's Mom' date='30 November 2010 - 02:41 PM' timestamp='1291142505' post='1729267']
Why would you need 4-6 sleepsacks? We have used them since the boys were born and have only ever had 2 at a time. Unless they pee through their diapers and jammies (a rare occurrence), then we just re-use every night and wash once a week. THIS is the kind we used last winter, and they held up great! :good:
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I was thinking they would need to be alternated every night or two. I have never used them so I don't know how much pee might soak through to them. I know that often times our boys' thick fleece sleepers smell like pee in the morning so I figured that smell would transfer to a sleepsack as well. And then there are the times when they are sick and barf on their PJs (thankfully that doesn't happen often though). Oh well, its a moot point because I have opted to go with a programmable outlet thermostat I figure that investment would last us for years (because we can later use it in our chilly basement) whereas sleepsacks would only last until the boys were too big for them. Though again I am totally ignorant of sleepsacks and for all I know they can be worn until they are 5 :lol:

 

Glad you found something that should work! :good: We keep our air set on 64/65 year round, my twins wear jammies (sometimes footed, sometimes not, sometimes heavy, sometimes lightweight), and I have blankets on their bed. They use toddler bedding now, so they have a sheet and a toddler comforter. I keep spare blankets in their room in case they seem chilly (when they have lightweight jammies they sometimes get chilly) and then I just put an extra blanket on them

But I know lots of people don't use blankets so that may not be an option for you

 

We always put a blanket in their crib but our boys haven't yet figured out how to use them and pull them over themselves And wow, I'm amazed at what some of you set your thermostats to. Canada made you tough Danibell :lol: I left our thermostat on 71 last night and had to wear a fleece pullover and wool socks until I went to bed, LOL. I think I'm just a wuss when it comes to cold weather, which is why I fret about my boys being cold too

 

I just saw that you actually solved the problem already, but I'd already typed this up, so I'll go ahead and post it...

There isn't any space heater I would feel comfortable using in a bedroom (especially a kids' bedroom) at night. We keep our house very cool (56) at night, though I think we turned it up to 66 when the babies were tiny. Until they moved to big beds at age 3, they slept in fleece PJs and a fleece sleepsack, and they seemed fine.

We had two sleep sacks per kid, just so I didn't have to stress about washing them. The kids weren't prone to tummy bugs or diaper leaks, so two per kid was plenty.

And FWIW, they do come in size 5! Although my kids both quit wearing them around age 3.

 

It's actually funny, because my kids are the opposite, they have trouble in the heat, getting overheated and dehydrated super fast, but do great in cool weather I can't stand being overheated especially at night, and my kids get up from their naps all sweaty when our temp is set at 69/70 during the day. They all prefer cool temps for sleeping. And as I type this I'm looking at Liam's hair, which is normally just fuzzy, and it's a mass of curls from sweaty sleeping :lol:

 

Just thought I would give an update. I bought this programmable thermostat from Amazon and started using it in the nursery with our infrared quartz heater, which we set up on their dresser out of reach and only leave it turned on low (400 watts). It took a few nights of tweaking the thermostat and then the heater (from 400 watt vs. 800 watt) but this combo seems to be working out great! I have a digital thermometer mounted outside the nursery door with the temperature gauge part taped to the wall inside the nursery (I did that back when I was all stressed about the nursery temperature, LOL). So I check it several times a night all through the night and our settings generally keep the room at 69.5 to 70.5 according to the nursery thermometer. We keep our house thermostat turned to 68, but the other rooms in the house are never that warm, they are more like 2 degrees below that. And 66 degrees is my comfort limit (with fleece and wool socks on)!! I feel comfortable leaving a low watt heater in the nursery because we have a smoke alarm inside the nursery, and 2 more smoke alarms mounted just 4-5 feet away in the hallway and guest room entrance, plus we always sleep with a monitor on. But I understand others that don't feel comfortable doing so.

Lastly, I ended up ordering this small radiator heater from Amazon too. I figured it was low energy (400 watt) and would potentially heat better than the Optimus radiant heater. I was soooo wrong. The Optimus is far and away a more efficient heater even at its 400-watt setting (and at half the price!), not to mention it doesn't "click" like the NewAir does (its built-in thermostat causes it to click when turning off and on). The only difference between the two is that the Optimus doesn't have a built-in thermostat, but who needs that when you can buy a programmable plug-in thermostat?

ETA: I was curious what it would cost to run a 400 watt heater and found a website that gave a formula based on the kilowatt-hour (kwh) that your electric company charges you. Based on our electric company's kwh charge if we ran a 400 watt heater 8 hours per night it would cost us $10 per month. However, with that plug-in thermostat regulating how much our 400 watt heater runs, I would guess we are only spending about $4 a month in electricity to run that heater in the nursery. It would cost a whole lot more than that to keep the house thermostat at 71 and hope the nursery stayed at 69