Dr Infrared Heater DR-988A Garage Shop 208/240-Volt, 4800/5600-Watt Heater with 6-30R Plug

I purchased this 2 weeks ago and have been pretty impressed with it. I'm using it to heat up my 300 sq ft work shop and it does a great job at doing it. I have insulated the walls of my shop with R-13 and the roof with R-16 so it is having to do less work to keep it warm. I've used it on a 20 degree days keeping the inside temp at 70 and it heats up to that temperature pretty quickly and maintains its.The heating properties of this fan are very good. I've installed several wall mount 240v heaters at my work and been around a lot of them but I like this one a lot more and it's cheaper than those. Most of the 240v heaters have pretty mild fans so you will wind up with unmixed air and varying temps in different parts of the room. The fan on this unit is powerful and does an excellent job mixing the air, while also not being obnoxious with the noise. Some reviewers stated it was loud, but I think it's pretty reasonable. I did a homemade air movement test using a vaporizer pen to make smoke and I blew smoke all over my shop in every corner and the middle while the fan ran it moved and dispersed the smoke quickly so it mixes the air 100% in my 20x15 shop with and 8 foot roof. The heater also does not generate dangerous amounts of heat in front of it. The fan moves the air quickly so the front of it can't really get the chance to catch anything on fire unless a towel was dropped directly on it I would have to guess. I have attached an infrared image showing the area it heats in front of the heater. Keep in mind that it is slightly deceptive, the blue ground is around 68F while the red area immediately in front is only around 85F and tapers off around 78F at the end.The thermostat works good on it. It maintains a ± .5-1 degree temperature range in my size shop so it's very dependable to keep a steady temperature.The cord it comes with is annoying like others have stated I cut off the end and put on a $10 replacement plug to make it the same as my welder, however I'm sure there is some electrical code reason that it has to ship with the style so it's no biggy just plan to add $10 or so more to the purchase price and 10 minutes to swap it.The overall fit and finish of the unit is great too. The paint is nice and thick and evenly applied it doesn't seem like it was cheaped out on. The button and knob feel nice and solid. The handle is sturdy and well mounted and the unit is pretty small sized so it can be stowed away easily and kept up in the summer without taking much space.Overall I recommend this heater and I don't think you can find a better one in this price range. I've seen several people complain about the heat it puts out. Electric heat is electric heat it's the same unit to unit. Unless there is a flaw in the product if it is pulling 20 amps like it should be then the heat is there and is the same heat as a different heater. If it won't heat your shop up any other heater at the same wattage won't either. Insulate your shop or get 2. The only thing I can't comment on is durability you can't really judge it after just 2 weeks, but after the amount of hours I've used it I would say it's going to be great for years to come.

|---UPDATE FEB 2014---|The heater is still going strong. I end up using it 3-4 days per week during the colder months, anywhere from 4-8 hours per day. We recently had a real cold snap here with overnight lows at 15 below or colder. The coldest morning in my garage workshop began at 22 degrees. I found that in this extreme cold the heater couldn't warm up my un-insulated garage quite as well. This isn't a total surprise: I'm not an expert in thermodynamics, but it would make sense that a space heater laboring against extreme cold is going to struggle more than just warming up a cool space. Anyway, the 10 degree per hour temperature rise I experience on cold mornings (i.e. going from 40 degrees to 50 degrees in my shop on a morning where it is 20 degrees outside) was halved on bitterly cold mornings. It took the heater 4 hours to raise the temp from 22 to around 40 degrees. In other words, on extremely cold mornings I get more like a 5 degree temperature rise per hour. This is not a criticism of the heater! It was still 5 below outside and I was working in a 40 degree space, so I was quite happy.I will update this review again should anything change.|---ORIGINAL REVIEW---|We have cool to cold weather about 5-6 months out of the year. I have a three-car tandem garage and the tandem spot is my workshop area. It is slightly larger than a 1-car spot and has high, 14' ceilings. It is open to the other 2 spots in the garage. The garage is uninsulated and gets down to about 30 degrees on the coldest nights.I have tried various heating solutions for this space. Conventional home space heaters simply don't put out enough heat at 5,000 BTUs, and I only have one circuit running to the garage so I couldn't run a second space heater. I tried the parabolic dish type heaters, but those tended to create uncomfortable "hot spots" when pointed at a person for too long and as soon as you moved out of the aim of the heater, you were back in the cold. I looked into the petroleum-based heaters that don't need to be vented, but if you do any research on those the health consequences seem like they could be bad.After searching for something more powerful, I came across this DR988 heater. I purchased it along with the Leviton 5376 30 Amp, 250 Volt, Surface Mounting Receptacle. I paid an electrician to run the 240 line and install the receptacle.This heater is exactly the solution I was looking for! It provides a warm, even heat that is blown out with surprising force. It is this air movement that is key, because it means the heater is sucking in cold air from behind it at an equally rapid rate. Putting it on the floor really helps, too. Since hot air rises, blowing the hot air along the floor allows the air to transfer heat to the floor, walls, and furniture before it rises to the ceiling and is wasted (I don't much care to heat air that is 5-10' above me). I point the heater at my primary work location. It is about 4-5' away from me on the floor. The warm air creates a really nice work space right around me, but it never gets too hot or uncomfortable. At the same time, it is warming the air throughout my workshop so when I move to a different spot in the workshop, I find similarly warmed air. It will consistently raise the temperate in the tandem spot in my garage 10 degrees per hour. The warm air trickles out to the two-car spots as well, as that area seems to warm at about 5 degrees per hour.Basically, I can walk into my workshop when it is 40 degrees and I'm wearing a coat and turn this heater on. After 2-3 hours, it is totally comfortable and I'm not even wearing a coat anymore.I did the rough math on the cost to operate this unit. At 19,000 BTUs, it costs me about $0.20 to $0.25 per hour to operate. Very worth it to enjoy working in my workshop year round again. As an added bonus, the always-cold bedroom located above our garage is suddenly much more comfortable on the days when I use this heater to warm up the garage.