My 12yo daughter K- generally falls asleep in a cold room and there’s not much I can do about it since she’s the very furthest room from the furnace, up at the top of the house while HVAC system is neatly tucked into a room in the basement.
It’s a pretty common architectural design and a common problem that the kids rooms end up furthest away and least able to be warmed up in the winter (or cooled down in the summer). I don’t want to just kick up the furnace to a ridiculous temperature since the rest of the house then ends up being too hot and our power bill goes through the proverbial roof. It’s already expensive enough to heat my house in the winter.
Portable space heaters are a great option, but there are some legitimate safety concerns: According to the National Fire Safety Association, “While only 32 percent of home heating fires involve space heaters, they are involved in 79 percent of home heating fire deaths”, so I’m very paranoid about safety, as is appropriate. Sure we have smoke detectors, but I’d rather avoid the fire in the first place. Still, a space heater is such a logical solution and there are some very nice ones on the market now, if you can find one that’s tested and proved to be safe in all situations.
For a while, we tried using a fancy high end space heater with remote in her room, but as it required her to turn the unit off each night as she fell asleep, it wasn’t a good solution and while many nights I’d poke my head in to check, there were some mornings where I realized it had been running all night. Energy inefficient, to say the least, and her room ended up so darn hot that it adversely affected her sleep too. Not such a win.
Enter Crane USA, with its line of safe and powerful space heaters. Turns out that its 27″ Slate Digital Ceramic Tower Heater has a built-in timer feature. Perfect! In fact, it’s full of cool and useful features, including a tip over safety switch and overheat sensors, along with a handy little remote control.
Here’s my video review, for your viewing pleasure:
As you can see, we’ve grown to love our Crane heater with its many safety features, elegant design, tiny remote control and, most importantly, sleep timer. 1 hour works great — K- falls asleep quickly — and I can also rest, knowing that she’s safe. The heater turns itself off after a short time, leaving her room to naturally cool off as the night passes.
Then with the remote, she turns it on again a few minutes before she has to get out of bed to warm up the room. A total win for both of us, and an attractive unit that has her happily leave it out all the time.
Check it out: Crane 27″ Slate Ceramic Tower Heater at Amazon.com. $99.99.