Welcome to Super Duper Heaters! We’re here to help you find the best heater for your particular needs. Whether you need a heater for your bathroom, bedroom or office, or maybe you need one for your patio or a job site, we’ll help you find the right heater for the job.

If you’ve ever spent any amount of time trying to find a good heater, chances are you were overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choices available. Do I want an electric or propane heater? Convection or radiant? What do those even mean? Is there really a big difference between the different types?

We’re happy to say that Super Duper Heaters is here to help. We’ve sorted our articles and guides into different categories that you can look through, and we’ll also cover the basics below.

The Many Different Types Of Heaters

When you sort through everything and get down to the nitty gritty, there are basically two methods of categorizing heaters: their power source (electric, propane or gas) and the way that they work (convection, fan, radiant or infrared). Let’s talk about these in a little bit more detail and discuss the power sources first.

Electric heaters are the most popular type of heater for just about any home or office need. Electricity is obviously widely available, it’s generally inexpensive, and electric heaters are very efficient and convenient to use.

Propane heaters and gas heaters are the other two types of heaters. They are not as common as electric heaters for residential or indoor use, but they do have a number of advantages in commercial and outdoor situations. If you’ve ever needed to heat a remote job site, or a hunting cabin that’s deep in the woods, chances are a propane heater or a gas heater was the best choice.

Moving on from the power source options, the next way to categorize heaters is by the way that they work. The options here are convection, fan, radiant and infrared.

Convection heaters work by using a heating element to heat the air in a room. As the air is heated, it begins to circulate around the room, and cooler air is pulled down to the heater. This cooler air is heated, and the cycle continues on. Convection heaters are great for indoor use and do a very thorough job of heating all the corners of a room evenly.

Fan heaters, or forced air heaters, as they’re sometimes called, work in much the same way as convection heaters. The only difference is that they use a fan to force the air to circulate more quickly than it normally would, thereby speeding up the heating process.

Radiant heaters are fundamentally different than convection heaters. Radiant heaters use a heating element that sends out infrared waves that are converted to heat when they contact a solid object. Instead of heating the air as a convection heater does, the waves from the radiant heater actually travel through the air, and are only converted to heat when they contact a solid object. Radiant heaters are great for outdoor use, as the random air currents won’t disrupt the flow of heat.

Infrared heaters work in just the same way as radiant heaters, and there is no practical difference between the two. The only difference is in the name – heaters like this that are designed for indoor use and/or electric power are generally called radiant heaters, and heaters designed for outdoor use and/or propane or natural gas are generally called infrared heaters.

So there you have a short introduction to the various types of heaters available. Take a few minutes and look around and you’re sure to find a heater that works for your situation.

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