Patio Heaters

With summer being here, it’s a great time to get out and enjoy your outside space entertaining friends and family alike, however when the temperature starts to drop as dusk falls, a Patio heater can be a great addition to the garden area, and I’ve recently found the options available to us are increasing more than ever before.

In the old days gas patio heaters were intermittent the way they ran, expensive to use and invariably ran out of gas just when you needed them.  They were very much eco-unfriendly and if the local Friends of the Earth Rep saw one in your garden, you’d certainly come in for some abuse from him!

Of course, as with all things in life technology moves on, and nowadays the patio heater has become a much more economical, reliable, eco-friendly addition to the garden.

Gas patio heaters today can be found manufactured to operate on propane, butane or natural gas and are very flexible offering the user a simple clean way of heating any outside area, and offer a much lower carbon emission per kilowatt of heat produced over their electric counterpart. They have an ability to heat in seconds, and unlike electric there are no wires to fall over when darkness prevails.  With high energy burners they offer a big step up from the old gas guzzlers of yesterday.

Electric patio heaters offer a real alternative to traditional gas heaters.  With an instant heat source, they don’t smell, they are energy efficient and silent.  A good selection of electric patio heaters are fully waterproof and can be mounted in a variety of different ways such as horizontally for example.  Unlike Gas, they are not just the traditional freestanding type.  If you are thinking about an electric patio heater then there are considerations to be made such as the IP rating which some heaters are marked with.  If you are using outdoors but under a parasol or the like then a lower IP rated heater may suffice. Likewise, avoid cheap – buy the best heater you can afford.

Whether or not you choose to go gas or electric will depend on a number of options.  Running costs of electric patio heaters can be kept low without compromise as the heater can be switched off when not required and heat can be instant when required.  Gas patio heaters invariably offer a maximum output of 13kW with commercial patio heaters offering upto 15kW and are portable to the point of use very quickly.

As with most garden products, a huge array of accessories are available for your heater such as a directional tilt reflector kit enabling you to focus the heat where you want it.  The kit offers the ability to tilt the head of the heater optimizing the heat spread, which maximizes efficiency.  Along with this, a range of covers in different colours can be found to accommodate the wide variances in shapes and sizes of all heaters and these are worth spending a few hard earned pounds on to keep that patio heater investment in tip top condition.