Talk:Oil heater

Safety and features. Is it wise to suggest that you can dry clothes etc on them, as far as I know it is not considered safe to dry clothes on any heater. 60.234.134.125 02:02, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Efficiency. If I'm understanding this article correctly, its comparing electric oil heaters to electric fan heaters. Both of which use electricity to create heat, both at 100% efficiency (OK, the fan in the fan heater converts some of the electricity to kinetic energy, but in the order of 1% or less in general I think). Neither are using any kind of thermodynamic cycle to extract heat more efficiently from an external source (the oil reservoir is not an external heat source), which is the only electric-powered heating method I can think of that might have greater efficiency (in terms of energy used vs heating of the room) than the direct conversion of electricity to heat that both fan heaters and electric oil heaters provide. Drfrogsplat 16:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Does somebody know what type of oil is typically used in these heaters? I did a brief search on the Internet using Google and Ask and none of the sites including the retailers discusses the type of oil used. JeremiahJohnson (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 16:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Mineral oil is used, according to the Wikipedia "mineral oil" atricle. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.184.247.232 (talk) 19:26, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Column heater
Real simple, should I supplement my home heating with a column heater ? $$$$$ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.66.211.12 (talk) 19:03, 1 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia doesn't generally give out advice; however if you only use a couple of rooms in the house, it might be more cost-effective to turn down or turn off the central heating, and use portable heaters instead. A lot of people use them at night, to heat the bedroom, after turning off the radiators in the rest of the house. Of course, there are other ways to heat the bedroom. But not every night. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 20:01, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Rename?
I suggest this be renamed Oil-filled heater. Oil heater might be confused with Kerosene heater. Biscuittin (talk) 21:23, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

What kind of oil? Plus explosion risk
I found the following links about oil heaters exploding. I was trying to research what kind of oil is inside of this type of heater. My assumption was mineral oil. However, reports of the explosions describe a yellow oil in one case. I also read rumors that some models may contain used oil recycled from other applications.

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=821317&mpage=1

http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/551553 (cited in the article)

http://www.epinions.com/review/Lakewood_5101_Heater/content_210026073732

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1064913

--Chris Murphy (talk) 22:28, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

More on the type of oil and other details
I found the article's claim that these oil column heaters are filled with silicone oils hard to accept so have deleted the mention (being bold principle), and the boiling points and associated references. Reasons: Please replace it with something better-sourced if I have been overly deletey. I have called it a "heat transfer oil" taking the lead of "Shell Heat Transfer Oil S2".
 * None of the references supported this that I could see. One of them, "Oil heater explodes, trial blown" directly suggests the liquid was flammable for example "Because it was oil-fuelled, the smoke was acrid and thick".
 * 150 degrees C claimed boiling point for an oil sounds awfully low for the purpose. The references didn't mention any type of silicone or siloxane. Specific heat capacity might be "high" but again the references don't say what is what.
 * Another commenter here says that mineral oil is used according to Wikipedia.
 * Like JeremiahJohnson and Chris Murphy here, I've struggled to find any easy references. I suspect there exists a mild form of 'cover up' (marketing reasons) that most of these heaters use flammable oil. I did find a reference from a couple of suppliers in China calling them "silicone oil heaters".
 * Other references I've found suggest these types of heaters often use mineral oil, which is combustible (will burn very well when overheated).
 * Silicone oil sounds expensive, and I could find no regulations requiring its use, which leads me to suspect it's generally not.

I also wasn't convinced that the specific heat capacity deserves as much attention as it had (these aren't really thermal storage heaters), so while making the above change I modified that and description of operation without stepping beyond the original intent of the article (it may want some tidy-up).

The section on efficiency also sounds location-specific, leading to problems like Drfrogsplat raises. The article seems to be talking about end to end efficiency (burning gas to generate electricity to power the heater). In the country where some of the references are from (New Zealand) gas and electricity are set to generally the same price, and much of the electricity is generated from renewable hydro as well. Not what I was dealing with here though. I also support the rename suggestion. Adx (talk) 00:38, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Tone template message removal
would it be reasonable to remove the following template message from the article?

I believe it would be okay, I've inspected the article myself and feel it would be fine to remove for now, but please let me know if it needs to be fine-tuned any more. Frostcrush Valari (talk) 17:31, 8 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Been about 10 days, think it would be fine to do so now.  18:13, 19 December 2023 (UTC)