On 27/02/18 22:22, Jeff Layman wrote:

Absolute nonsense.

No it's not - and your experience is probably based on your heaters
being 20 years old.

I was running fan heaters in the early parts of my bungalow renovation
(10 years ago) and I bought "decent" ones. Except they were plastic. I
caught one with a red hot spot on the element and right in front of
that, the plastic grill was melting.

The others started doing that and I had to take them to bits to clean
the fluff out.

Mordern fan heaters IME are unsafe by design.

I've been using fan heaters in greenhouses for over
20 years. All sorts of crud on the elements - spiders' webs, dust, small
dead leaves, other plant-based material, etc, and I've never seen or
smelt evidence of burning. After about eight years, I did have one
element go o/c, though, and I've had a thermostat fail with crud on the
contact points. And I only use the absolutely cheapest 1 - 2kW fan heaters.

Anyway, if someone was really concerned about fire, they could always
use a ceramic-element fan heater.


Or an oil filled rad like I suggested - probably the safest of all
electric heaters.