Holmes HCH4051-UM Compact Ceramic Heater with Manual Thermostat Review

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List Price: $26.99
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Our gas bill for heating our trailer was $300 a month, here in Wisconsin for the last 3 months. We bought TWO of these (only two!) and turned our gas furnace's thermostat down to 50 and then put one of them in the back and one in the front of the place. I don't know why people are saying the heating area is small? Maybe the fan isn't blowing much, but the two little heaters we got have actually kept our WHOLE place around 70 degrees.

Okay so yeah, I guess there was a smell when we first turned them on, but that quickly went away.

For as little as they cost I'd have to say they are definitely worth the buy. The cost in electricity is STILL far less than what we were paying for our gas bill.

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I recently discovered the source of the smell. The plastic nearest to the ceramic element is melting. This is not quality work and now is a potential source of a fire. I am currently holding on to it waiting for a recall.

I have pics if anyone would like to see the melted plastic on the heater.

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I returned the HCH4051 I got to go under my desk. It was a handy size, and I could probably have dealt with the rather high noise level, but I couldn't handle the smell! Even after running it full-bore for HOURS outside, it still gave off a nasty chemical odor. It smelled like pesticide, like 2,4-D or something. That was unacceptable.

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I bought this from Home Depot for $12.59. I was mainly curious what kind of heat I could get out of a machine that was less that $13. With the fan set on high, and the temp. at max, this unit heats up about 1' directly in front of the fan, and about 1-2' directly above it. So, unless you just want to set it on the floor and warm up your feet, I would say use that $13 and put it towards another heater........I will be returning it tomorrow. Hopefully this will save some people some trouble and now you know what to expect.

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I like this little heater, but I would recommend that customers be alert about some things. It is inexpensive and very compact and lightweight, yet it is a remarkable little space heater. One possible initial concern is that it is fairly fragile. If you are a little handy, it is a simple device that you can probably deal with easily, should a need arise, but if you are not at all handy, then be somewhat cautious.

When I received the heater, it was already broken. It had been packed in the corner of a box, with padding only on the internal sides, and it had apparently fallen hard during shipping; therefore, the fan motor was torn from its plastic mount. The motor mounting screws were tight, but they held on only to broken pieces of the housing. Send it back for repair? That would require more in time, trouble, and shipping than the heater cost in the first place. Instead, I took the heater apart and cemented the broken plastic back together with Loctite Plastic Bonder, a specialized super glue with primer, which I will watch to confirm that it gives a permanent bond. For the immediate future, I won't leave the heater running when I'm not in the room.

Some people have complained about the heater causing a smell. I don't see why this would happen, unless something was broken or jarred in shipment, causing wires or plastic from the case to be moved into the heat stream or to touch hot parts. When the heater is properly together, it seems to be a little gem, with its simple and economical design seeming more of an engineering victory than a liability. It takes the chill off my basement TV room nicely, the heat path is clean, the fan sound is barely noticeable, and the plastic case warms only mildly, very touchably, in a few places. My thirty year old soldering iron has a stronger smell when it heats up, and that is very mild.

If you receive this heater with all its parts in the right places, or you can get them there, then you may well appreciate this straightforward device. Once you have it, there seems no reason that much would go wrong, or that repair would be difficult, or that, in the worst case, a replacement would be unaffordable. Unfortunately, shipping may be the high moment of risk in the life cycle of this product.