We are fast approaching the season of perpetual wetness and, like most people, I hate it.
I would like to get at least two; one for my bedroom, and one for the larger main room. Recommended sizes? Brands? Does a larger one really reduce moisture from the whole room, or do you only notice it working within a certain radius?
While we’re here, does anyone use a space heater? I know a lot of westerners are pretty warm-blooded but I personally can’t handle the damp cold here. Gets into my bones.
Hitachis are great. Can’t beat the Japanese . Get a big one for the living room.
At home we have a 3M and a Panasonic. The 3M is more powerful and has a setting that helps to dry clothes, it stays in the living room. The Panasonic tends to warm up the room a little bit, so we keep it in the bedroom during winter.
Our ac unit is great at removing humidity but the rooms tends to feel a bit cooler, so my wife doesn’t want to use it in winter. When she’s not home, i crank that thing on as long as i can.
Now this is an interesting feature. Do you know if it’s common to other brands or just 3M?
My Hitachi has the same
Old types just freeze up when it’s really cold, it’s actually a refrigeration unit that collects condense water and it should drip off, but when really cold it freezes.
Ditto with my Sharp. But this is an incredible beast from the past, pre-Terry Gou takeover, when Sharp was still making their machines in Japan. It’s been running every day for well over a decade!
Guy
We have three units: one older Panasonic, one newer Panasonic and a Toshiba. The Panasonic ones are better imho. They make less noise, build quality is better and emptying the water reservoir is also easier. The Toshiba works, but lacks the previous mentioned quality points of the Panasonic units. IOW, we will not buy Hitachi again.
They all work well up to 12m2, but for our living room we either use the A/C in dehumidifying mode or when it is cold we have a kerosene heater to keep it warm and dry at the same time. One 20 liter tin of kerosene will get us through a week.
We also have electric space heaters (the traditional ones), but the ones in Taiwan are usually underpowered (1200W max) due to the low current that 110V can deliver. For small rooms they are fine, but for bigger rooms you need two at least. I brought a 230V heater from Europe and feed that from the A/C outlet for my 18m2 study, but if you have a really big room kerosene heaters are the way to go.
BTW, stay away from the oil-filled radiator plate style heaters. They take forever to heat up and hardly produce radiated heat, so you will never get a room nice and warm. Apart from that they suck electricity like mad, so your bill will sky-rocket. We got rid of ours, so you know.
Not stinky?
I’ve also had success with Panasonic models. Good machines, and I very much like their no-nonsense designs.
Guy
this is nice and comprehensive, thanks. I have a lot of other Panasonic appliances and they serve me very well so I might just stick with them.
The one heater I’ve seen at one of my friend’s homes is basically the shape of a fan, but instead of blowing air around it radiates heat. I guess it’s kind of like a glowing orb on a stick? Anyway, I thought that was really effective and I liked that the heat source is elevated off the ground because it seems to be less of a fire hazard that way. Plus I can aim it directly at the bed. No idea where I might find something like that, though.
I only really plan to use it in my bedroom, so big heaters are not necessary, but thanks for the tips.
No, not smelly at all, except when you fill up, but you do that outside. When you turn it off there is a small pump that makes the kerosene in the heater flow back into the tank, so that will also prevent kerosene smell.
We haven’t used these types of heaters, yet, because they are kind of new: only showed up in the last couple of years. Just like fans they use a lot of space and cannot be stored away economically in the summer, so we prefer the traditional type of space heater.
I have an infrared heater it works very well for quick results. Obviously you cant use it in your bedroom.
I had an old radiator space heater I also chucked it far too slow .
We have 6 dehumidifiers. Our two big ones which are Mitsubishi…their biggest model. I like that you can set the unit to auto turn on and off. I am happy with the effect even in a very big room. However, since the units drain directly into a drainage pipe I can run the dehumidifier most of the day if I need (no need to empty water pan).
The others include Hitachi, Sharp and Panasonic. I guess that covers all the major brands. Actually we are happy with all of them which were bought within the last 3 years. These newer ones are definitely better than the old ones we used to use.
I had an awesome Carrier…alas, it broke down and there was no one to fix it, or so I was told. Company left, like Westinghouse.
The Sharp I have now has broken down once in less than 3 years. Bought it as it has a setting for pet smell, well, removing stinks. That works well, drier OKish, but noisy. No warming effect. Would not buy again. Allegedly made in Japan. Swear to God it is not the same machine I sent to be fixed, but can’t prove it.
Have an old Panasonic ceramic heater that works like a charm. But it feels really unsafe. Every year I buy a new heater to try out, whether ceramic or coil heater, nope nope. But I do not dare to do kerosene with the pets around. Basically we try to keep each other warm by body heat until summer breaks in.
We have 3 Carriers (one for each floor), they’ve worked well for more than 12 years now. About knee-high. Never needed a space heater, it never gets that cold here.