Bathroom-Safe Heater

The Holmes heater with the bathroom-safe plug will, alas, not solve all life's problems, but it's looking like it will solve a couple. Namely...

It's cold -- or it will be very soon. It may be easier (read: cheaper!) to heat my 200 square foot mini-studio than it is to heat a house, but it is not easy. I moved out of a larger studio apartment and into this one to save money. But due to where the apartment is located within the building (read: almost outside the building!) it's chilly. And due to where the bathroom is located within the apartment, it's really chilly. But...

Even when it's cold, it can be hot! The built-in heating unit in my apartment is a strip located right under the window. Sure the daybed is right there against that heater -- but the bathroom is located on the other end of the apartment. So to heat the bathroom, I have to heat the whole studio and a bit of the outside world, too.

Sometimes I crank up the heat in the evening, but it doesn't get warm enough, and I don't want to go in the bathroom. So I don't. I truck off to sleep. But then in the middle of the night.... all is warm. I wake up under the covers and pressed against the heating unit, thirsty as well as hot, with my dreams starting to cook and get nasty.

I need a little heater. But there are some considerations:

I can be obsessive about things that heat up... and things that plug in. Granted, this building is not likely to burn down. The fire alarm system works well, as anyone who has spent enough time here knows (and anyone who has spent enough time outside waiting for the fire department after someone burns a pot on the stove really knows). But I want a relatively bathroom-safe plug. I want something with some sort of auto-off feature.

I can't spend a lot of money on a bathroom-safe heater, and I know at the onset that the Holmes heater is the one I will go with. Well, not at the very onset, perhaps, but after I have read some reviews. What else is there at this price? The Holmes heater has a special plug for bathrooms. The appliance can be set to come on at a certain time, and it will turn itself off a while later! In the morning, I want to use it only with this 'shut off in half an hour' feature. Wal-Mart has a cheaper bathroom heater, but it doesn't have this option.

Like clockwork, on the first day of the date range Amazon gave me, a package arrives.

I open it. I start perusing the instructions... and I see something about setting the clock. Ah, there will be a clock in the bathroom, too, I think. I am moving up in the world, indeed. (Upon deeper introspection, I realize a clock is to be expected in a device that turns on at a given time. Still, those numerals glow like a beacon.)

When it comes to instruction manuals and diagrams, I am not the brightest fixture in the room. But I get the basics figured out before too long. I put the heater on a stable surface. I tinker with buttons. I learn: If I press the correct button beforehand, the thermostat dial can be used like a watch dial to set the time. (And pretty quickly, too.)

Now what about heat? I think I'm pressing the right button, but... Ah, the device wasn't turned on when I set the time! But if I press the power button, I can have some heat!

Sweet! I mean cozy!

I haven't had my space heater long, but we're getting along.

I was aware that the timer had to be reset on a daily basis. It appears the clock also needs to be reset frequently. No big deal, though!

Any regrets? Well, this thing also has a fan only setting. It would have been nice to have in the summer. I might have moved it over to the daybed for a change of scenery...

Postscript: It was a cozier winter. The heater made the bathroom plenty warm, plenty quickly. There were a few times when I couldn't get it to come on, but I think that was the fault of the electrical system in this building. The first time I couldn't get it to come on, I moved it to another socket outside the bathroom and -- voila -- it was on. The bathroom wasn't warm, but the heater was humming away.

Oh, and I also learned not to have the heater and microwave on at the same time if I didn't want to trip a circuit.

But the heater heats! Now it's time to see how it fans...

Here are some more little heaters I fancy.