Bulbs & Fittings Ideas

I live in a drafty basement in Montana. It’s cold. I bought the Optimus H-3013 for at a local hardware store. I’m happy with it. It works.

It’s not as nice as an old school American Titan milk house. That’s because the Optimus, like everything else these days, is Chinese. So, whatever.

I wanted a milk house because I like the style and they are safe and cheap.

The optimus is the best of the cheap ones. It has a nice body compared to some of the mesh screened ones i’ve seen. The tip over function works well. The thermostat works when you figure it out. It turns on and off a lot but if you bring it up to your temp and drop it slightly below it works great. The dials have a nice tactile feel. It’s definitely not going to burn anyone. My cat sticks his face against it for several minutes at a time and survives.

Goods:

Feature rich. has everything a milk house should in a good and decent quality design.

Bads:

A grounded power chord would have been nice. I did expect it to get hotter, but I think only the old school ones get super hot. I read about being able to rewire the optimus because the fan power saps the heat coils. But, I’ll probably never do it because it works fine.

Verdict:

It’s overpriced on amazon. I got it for at a local hardware store. Lots of places carry these heater for less than .

It’s name is cool and its the best looking and best quality of all the cheap chinese milk house heaters.

I have purchased two of these heaters and encountered the same problem with both of them.
Granted, they are a low priced heater. I paid .95 (on sale) for each of mine.
Both functioned for a few months, being used only occasionally for limited amounts of time to heat my basement workshop.
The amount of heat produced; even at the maximum setting was very disappointing; for both units.
Worse yet; both unit developed the same problem.
They would temporarily shut down and then resume operating a few minutes later. Both the fan and heating unit would shut off, and then resume operating temporarily.
It was like a thermal overload was producing a temporary shutdown.
the end result was that very little “heat” was produced.
The old adage about “getting what you paid for” certainly applies to this heater!
Politely stated; it is a piece of junk!

Dont buy this as a heater. Maybe buy this as a fan.

This unit has a few settings: Fan, 500w, 1000w, 1500w.

You have to set it to 1500w to get any sort of heat, and that is just too high of a power draw for too little heat. And the thing sounds like a lawnmowers. The fan is hardly balanced.

Only buy this heater for its cold-war era nostalgia. For heat, you’re better off with a tiny ceramic heater box.