Home Improvement Skills & Specialties HVAC

Electric Wall Heater Review: Pros, Cons, and Installation

Is a Electric Wall Heater Right for You?

Wall-Mounted Electric Convection Heater

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Heating can be one of the toughest problems confronting homeowners building a room addition, refinishing a basement, or updating a bathroom or bedroom. Electric wall heaters are a convenient way to bring heat into the most far-flung room. 

Electric wall heaters install exactly where you need them; their location is not pre-determined by HVAC ductwork. But make no mistake: these devices do have some drawbacks when compared to other types of heating.

Pros
  • Inexpensive

  • Ductwork not required

  • DIY-friendly

  • Spot heating

Cons
  • Noisy

  • Buffer required

  • Expensive to run

  • Energy loss

Cost

Electric wall heaters cost between $115 and $250 per unit. These heaters far less than extending HVAC ductwork or even installing electric hydronic baseboard heaters. 

Installing a modulating 97.5-percent furnace costs an average of $5,700.

Maintenance and Repair

Wall heaters contain orange-hot metal heating elements. Though they tend to be recessed a few inches back in the metal wall case, they are still close enough to the surface that they can ignite nearby flammable items. 

You should always keep the manufacturer-recommended buffer zone between the heater and the floor, other walls, towels, toilet paper, and anything else.

Electric wall heaters are easy to maintain. The outer section and grille can be vacuumed with a home vacuum.

Placement

Wall heaters can quickly heat up an entire room. These heaters are perfect for single rooms. They are not for entire floors or for multiple areas. 

If you have several rooms on a floor, you'll need one heater per room, plus one or more for each hallway or common area.

Electric wall heaters work best on interior walls rather than exterior walls. This is exactly the opposite for electric baseboard heat, which is usually mounted on an outside wall and placed under windows.

Installation

Installing an electric wall heater is little more than cutting a square hole in the wall, running 120V or 240V wiring into the device, securing the device to the wall, and turning it on. 

If you have easy wire access, you can have a heater installed and running in just an hour or two.

Operation

Electric wall heaters are entirely self-contained. Cold air is drawn into the heater through the front and then is drawn across the internal heating coils. The hot air is then blown out into the room without the need for ducts.

Wall heaters are point-of-service heating at its very best. You can target a cold area with one of these devices. You can heat up that area without heating up the rest of the house.

Some devices rated for 240V are switchable so they can be connected to either 240V or 120V power. If 120V is chosen, though, the heat output will be halved. Note that the reverse will not work: a 120V device connected to 240V power will blow out and be ruined. Some wall heaters can be internally adjusted to run on a wide variety of different wattages.

Energy Efficiency

Electric in-wall heaters bear the distinction of being both energy-smart and not energy-smart, when viewed from different angles:

Energy Efficient

While electricity is not the most efficient way to heat a house, wall heaters do use energy wisely in the sense that they are designed to heat specific spaces.

If that weren't enough, electric heating converts 100-percent of its fuel to heat—unlike gas heating, which sends much of the heat up the exhaust vent.

Because electric in-wall heaters are confined to specific spaces, they don't heat more area than they're intended for. Plus, with thermostats highly sensitive to the room's temperature level, electric wall heaters shut off much faster when the target temperature has been reached than whole-house heating.

Energy Inefficient

Electricity is not the most efficient way to produce heat. Only about 30-percent of the original fuel used to produce the electricity (coal, gas, or oil) end up as electricity. Also, electricity loses much power due to generation and transmission line losses.

Plus, when these heaters turn off, they radiate very little heat. By contrast, steam or water radiators or hydronic baseboard heaters are far more efficient because after the heating element turns off, internal fluids continue to emanate heat.

Top Brands

  • Cadet
  • King Electric
  • Mr. Heater
  • Stiebel Eltron

Electric Wall Heaters vs. Space Heaters

Electric wall heaters are similar to portable space heaters. The difference is that wall heaters are permanent—recessed inside a wall. 

Electric wall heaters do not plug in; they are hard-wired into an electrical branch circuit (the wire that runs through your walls). Powered by either 120V or 240V electricity, wall heaters usually have thermostats on the devices. However, some models do have detached thermostats to allow for one thermostat to control multiple heaters within a single space.

Wall Heater
  • Hard-wired

  • Recessed in wall

  • Thermostat on device or on wall

  • 120V or 240V

Space Heater
  • Plugs into outlet

  • Rests on floor

  • Thermostat on device only

  • 120V only

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  1. Electric Resistance Heating. U.S. Department of Energy