Shub Heats — Electric room heaters and immersion water | shubheats.com
Five checks in order, each one aimed at a named failure — run them before any heater is left on unattended.
Start at the wall. A 1,500 W heater on a 230 V supply draws about 6.5 A, which is why portable heaters ship with a fused 13 A plug. Check the plug and cord for scorch marks, looseness and damage — an overheated plug is the first failure this catches.
Second, test the tip-over switch: with the heater running, tilt it gently and confirm power cuts immediately. A stuck tip-over switch is one of the most common faults in used heaters and the one that matters most if the unit is knocked over.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
Third, clear the surroundings. Keep the air path free of curtains, bedding and laundry, observing the clearance distances printed in the heater's manual — a blocked intake drives element temperature upward, which is exactly what the thermal cut-out exists for.
Fourth, run one full warm-up and watch the thermostat. A fan heater should warm the room in 5-10 minutes; an oil-filled radiator needs 15-30 minutes to bring its fins to 60-90 °C. In both cases the heater should then cycle off. A unit that never cycles has a failed thermostat; a unit whose thermal cut-out never trips even when hot — the cut-out should disconnect at roughly 120-150 °C element temperature — is a unit to retire.
Fifth, set the mode deliberately. Frost protection holds an empty room at 5-7 °C to stop pipes freezing while drawing only a fraction of rated power; an occupied bedroom wants a thermostat setting that lets the heater cycle. Dust burn-off smell during any of these steps is a warning, not a quirk — switch off and clean or replace the unit.
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