Room heaters...heating a fish room. What would you use?

[emartin]

What would you all use to heat a fish room?

The room has insulation on all walls except the one attached to the house, and one of the insulated walls has a large glass (double pane) sliding door on it (I plan on installing an insulated curtain over that very shortly). The room does have a small radiator in it but if memory serves me correctly it doesn't work very well in that particular room; it gets kind of chilly in there when the rest of the house is nice and warm.

I have a plug-in thermostat that I'll use to regulate the temperature to either 74F-75F for all my tanks (in the warm months (including now) I have the room temperature set at 78F-79F with a window air conditioner keeping the room from overheating).

The room does have two GFCI outlets but I was thinking of using a portable one so I can keep it plugged in closer to the outlet (no extension cords, I don't feel like spending the extra cash on a super-heavy duty extension cable). There is a ceiling fan in there that I was going to use to help circulate the air more.

What type of heater would you all recommend? I was thinking of an oil-filled portable radiator but most of the units I am finding locally and online only handle up to 140ft square feet (the room is about 210 sq ft). While the fishroom is fairly new (20 years old) compared to the house (80-100 years old), it still connects to the house's electricity. Back when they built the house they didn't have many 1,500watt electronics plugged in, so I am hesitant to plug in more than one of these heaters for fear of overloading any of the wiring in the house.

Which is why I am not sure I want to go with a portable radiator. I liked that they're pretty much 100% safe from starting fires, but I am not sure it would be powerful enough to keep the room warm.

What heaters do you all recommend that are safe? The flooring in that room is VCT tile (the kind of tiles you see in supermarkets, etc), not carpeting. The only likely fire hazard I can think of is if a tank leaks and water comes in contact with the heater, or if the heater falls over and melts the tiles (they're made of vinyl) and starts a fire that way.

What type of heaters & brands do you recommend, and any tips for positioning the heater to make it firesafe? Would plugging it into a GFCI outlet or a Surge Protector make their use any safer or it wouldn't matter?

Also, do any heaters help make the air dry/reduce humidity? I've been dependent on the air conditioner to help cut down on the humidity during the summer but if any heaters will help make the air dry/reduce humidity I'd be more interested in those.

[dsap92]

What kind of temp does the room hold during the winter without a heater? You may just be able to run a dehumidifier. My dehumid throws off a hell of a lot of heat, and it is a fairly new model. A two year old Friedrich with an auto drain feature. That would give you heat and keep the humidity down.

Many new heaters have a safty switch inside that shuts them down if they go too far off level (fall over). If you do add a heater you may want to look for that. I have seen it on electric coil heaters. Never looked at the oil filled ones.

[yourfishstuff]

I second the dehumidifier. I heated a small room with one, but did need to add tank heaters in the bottom tanks of each rack.

Is the room southern facing?

[joe_jaskot]

Ed, if you have a radiator in the room that is not getting warm, you may have to bleed it. Here is a link to a video showing you how to do it: http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-bleed-a-radiator-6 Bleeding the radiator usually does the trick.
As far as a dehumidifier goes, you want moisture in the air in the wintertime. Indoor air is usually too dry in the winter due to the heat.

[emartin]

Ed, if you have a radiator in the room that is not getting warm, you may have to bleed it. Here is a link to a video showing you how to do it: http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-bleed-a-radiator-6 Bleeding the radiator usually does the trick.
As far as a dehumidifier goes, you want moisture in the air in the wintertime. Indoor air is usually too dry in the winter due to the heat.
The radiator gets warm, just not warm enough to heat the whole room. The room has a lot of outside walls that let it get much colder/hotter than the rest of the house depending on the season. The fish room was an addition built onto the house 20 years ago. The only link it has to the house is one wall...the ceiling and three of the walls are outside walls.

The room stays about 10F (or more) colder than the rest of the house. We used to live in this house ten years ago, moved out and moved back in this year ten years later. The radiator isn't running now but like I said, the room was about 10F cooler than the rest of the house. I remember when we used to live here we had a bigger radiator installed then and we still had to use a space heater in there whenever we used it (it was used as an office). That radiator broke 7 years ago I think, and we replaced it with a baseboard radiator (the rest in the house are cast iron).

Right now the room is already a few degrees cooler than the house but the heat isn't turned on yet. It's cool already because of how many of its wall and the ceiling that are in contact with the outside.

Either way, it's not going to heat the room to 74/75F, and there's no way we're setting the house thermostat that high just so my fish can have that temperature. There isn't an individual thermostat for that room.


What kind of temp does the room hold during the winter without a heater? You may just be able to run a dehumidifier. My dehumid throws off a hell of a lot of heat, and it is a fairly new model. A two year old Friedrich with an auto drain feature. That would give you heat and keep the humidity down.

Many new heaters have a safty switch inside that shuts them down if they go too far off level (fall over). If you do add a heater you may want to look for that. I have seen it on electric coil heaters. Never looked at the oil filled ones.
Not sure what exact temperature but I remember it getting cold enough to warrant a room heater just for us to be comfortable in there as well as requiring a sweater during the very cold months.

I don't want to get rid of the humidity 100%, as that will just encourage water evaporation. I just don't want it to build to high levels that will encourage mold growth in the room. The walls and ceiling are painted with an anti-mold/mildew paint but there still are a couple areas (like the wooden stands) where mold could grow.

Is the room southern facing?
The room is, technically, facing north, east, west, and "up". The south wall is connected to the house.

[JROGO]

I installed a vent free gas heater heats my entire basement on the 2-3 setting and the couple times in the last 6 years that we lost power I turned it up and kept my basement door open and it heated my house with no troubles. Pretty easy to install yourself and it looks like a wood burning stove/fireplace.

Thanks
Joe

[cichfrk]

...You may just be able to run a dehumidifier. My dehumid throws off a hell of a lot of heat, and it is a fairly new model. A two year old Friedrich with an auto drain feature. That would give you heat and keep the humidity down..... My dehumidifier in the basement has a "humidistat" feature. It automatically senses changes in humidity. It runs all through summer but it's dead in winter.

[Heyguy74]

Ed,

You seem to be comparing your fish room now to when you used to live in the house. The fact that you have so much water in the room will change how the room cools off. It will hold the heat far better now with all the water in it. You wont need a larger heater for the room. Let your regular house heat do as much as possible and then look for a small heater. I would look to make sure the room is well sealed inside and out. Caulk any cracks inside and out. Seal the windows and any outside doors with some of that plastic wrap. I would try the dehumidifier first. Also consider using styrofoam sheets on the sides and back of the tanks. I would only use the styrofaom if you have problems with a large loss of heat in the room for whatever reason.

[bassgenie]

+1 On the dehumidifier. I think in conjunction with an oil filled radiator and really good insulating of that door, you should be ok. I just got some really inexpensive insulating curtains from target with thinsulate in them.the oil filled radiator I have has an auto shut off in case of tipping over. Its surprising how much heat they produce. Id say if you bought a high end one that's meant for the size room you have, you would be ingreat shape.

[bassgenie]

+1 on the caulking too

[Buckcich]

+1

The amount of water you got in that room will hold alot heat overnight.
IMO, between the house heat, a"little" help from a oil filled portable radiator and residual water heat, you will be fine overnight.
Ed don't forget you are just boasting the temperature in the room from mid 60's to mid 70's. That portable heater will handle that increase easily. You are not attempting to keep the room warmed from scrach. You do have TWO heat sourches plus perhaps the tank heaters.
That's what I been doing it for the past couple years. Minimum overnight water temperatures of 72F when was bellow zero outside.
If you are concern about winter humidity build-up just keep the door open, connecting the fishroom to the rest of the house, your family will appreciate the extra humidity in the winter.
It works for me!

[triscuit]

All good advice here. I do all the windows in my rental property with the 3M window kits. It's amazing how much they help. When I last needed to raise the heat in my fishroom/bathroom/laundry room, I used my oil filled portable radiator, and it really cranked the heat out. BTW- my house was built in the 1880's, parts of the wiring were updated in the 50s, and the wiring still can handle a few of these heaters with no trouble.

For all the reasons stated above, you are not going to need quite as much heat as you think. During windy days, it'll be cooler, but not enough that a small auxiliary heat source couldn't compensate.

[emartin]

Thanks for all the info everybody. I think I'm going to go ahead and try the portable radiator first and see how that works. There is one other room in the house that gets a little chilly in the winter and I could move the heater into that room if it doesn't do that job in my fish room so it won't get wasted.

One of the main reasons I was thinking of using something more powerful than the radiator though was that I was actually considering shutting off the baseboard radiator in that room all together so I can install another tank rack in front of it without worrying about it overheating a fish tank.

Anyway thanks again for all the replies.

[joe_jaskot]

Hope I am not being redundant, but you should bleed those radiators in the rooms where you are not getting enough heat. Trapped air is often the cause of poor heating in radiators. Unless the radiators are undersized for the room, they should produce enough heat to heat it.

[Heyguy74]

Hope I am not being redundant, but you should bleed those radiators in the rooms where you are not getting enough heat. Trapped air is often the cause of poor heating in radiators. Unless the radiators are undersized for the room, they should produce enough heat to heat it.

great idea. It can't hurt