Picture the following. It is an especially cold night. Your home doesn’t have central heat and air. You don’t have a fireplace. Your small space heater just stopped working. What do you do? Suddenly, you have what you think is a great idea to heat your home with the kitchen stove. You might even think it is a great idea to open up those stainless steel wall ovens that you bought to match the stainless steel Frigidaire or Samsung refrigerator and just let the heat crank.
Of course, in an emergency situation like this, the stainless steel double oven might be all you have to work with. However, instead of using a simple space heater that can easily break, you could have also purchased an electric fireplace that is much more reliable.
This does bring up a good question: Do electric stoves or ovens heat better than an electric fireplace? Let’s explore more about the types of ovens and stoves found in kitchens, and the types of electrical fireplaces available, and compare them.
In the Post Below, You’ll Find Yourself Learning The Following:
- What Are The Different Kinds Of Electrical Stoves and Ovens? – Kitchen cooking appliances come in a variety of different types, styles, brands, and models. To properly compare the home heating capabilities of these with electric fireplaces, it is important to list the different types that there are.
- How Many Categories of Electric Fireplaces Are There? – After we have covered stoves and ovens, we need to cover the multitude of electric fireplaces that you can choose from as well. This will target the main types of fireplaces, not specific brands.
- Does An Electric Stove Or Oven Heat Better Than an Electric Fireplace? – With the knowledge at hand of all of the different types of heat sources and the heating elements they come with, we can compare the differences between electric stoves and electric fireplaces and see which one comes out on top.
- Is it dangerous to heat your home with a gas stove? – What if your stove’s gas instead of electric? Can you heat your home with that? Here we cover why it just might not be the best idea in the world to do so, and how it can actually be quite harmful to your health.
- How Do Wood Stoves Work? – Are wood stoves a good alternative and how do they work? We break these stoves down and also talk a bit about stoves that use coal for fuel.
- What Are All of The Different Benefits You Get From Owning An Electric Fireplace? Electric fireplaces have so many wonderful benefits. This section of the post will highlight some of the most useful benefits that electric fireplaces will contribute to your home.
- Is It Good To Spend More On A High-End Electrical Fireplace? – It always seems like a good thought to get a cheap and affordable item. This part will focus on why this thought shouldn’t be applied to electrical fireplaces and how it can actually end up costing you more than you planned in the long run.
- Why Is MagikFlame Such A Popular Choice? – There is no shortage of happy customers who love MagikFlame electric fireplaces. So, what makes these fireplace units just so popular anyway? We cover the great features found in MagikFlame fireplaces and also share some extra information.
What Are The Different Kinds Of Electrical Stoves and Ovens?
There are many different kinds of electric stoves and ovens. One thing you will see a lot is an electric range. Ranges are when you combine both ovens and stoves together into one unit. These ranges usually have a set of induction cooktop or countertop coils for using cookware on top of the unit, with an attached convection oven below. These are usually called side-in ranges. An electric range can sometimes have a cast-iron griddle on top in addition to or replacement of the induction cooktop coils.
The convection or air fry-style oven usually includes a broiler that allows the convection-style oven to be self-cleaning. A self-cleaning oven heats the interior up by blasting it with heat and burning up any splattered food. Self-cleaning can be a bit of a misleading term. While they have this self-cleaning function, they do still require hands-on cleaning from time to time.
There are also some hybrid electric and gas range ovens. Dual fuel ranges combine a stovetop that burns natural gas with an electrical oven. Combining the heating elements of the gas range with the electric ovens this way allows the best of both worlds.
Many ranges have an air vent above it, but you can also find a microwave or even cabinetry.
How Many Categories of Electric Fireplaces Are There?
When you organize the different types, it really all comes down to just four separate electric fireplace categories:
- Electric Fireplace with Mantle – So that homeowners can easily choose whatever kind of mantle style best fits their tastes, these wall unit electric fireplaces usually come as two separate pieces: the fireplace itself and a mantle that combines with it. Electric fireplace mantles can be a wall unit, corner unit, or even come built into an interesting media center design.
- Electrical Fireplace Insert – For people who already have a gas or wood fireplace in their room and want to continue utilizing the space, you can convert them with these electrical inserts. Depending on the size, these inserts should fit into the open hearth of a traditional fireplace. The only real difference between the inserts and the mantle units is that these don’t have the mantle. Otherwise, for many brands and models, they are identical to the units above.
- Hang Wall Mount Electrical Fireplace – Some people with a taste for a modern aesthetic like raising their fireplaces up the wall and off of the ground. This is where wall-mount electrical fireplaces are useful. They include brackets to securely mount a heavy fireplace to the wall via the studs inside the wall. These fireplaces are also what you want to go with if you plan on inserting the fireplace into a recessed wall. Depending on your preferences and the space you’re working with, they can be installed completely flush in the wall, or only partially recessed where it sits out slightly.
- Space Heater Fireplace – You know those space heaters that you can plug in and move from room to room easily? Those are sometimes designed to look like a fireplace, but they usually aren’t very convincing at all. Additionally, these don’t heat rooms as well as the other types of fireplaces you can find listed above.
Does An Electric Stove Or Oven Heat Better Than an Electric Fireplace?
Unless you really have a cheap, low-quality electric fireplace, electric stoves or ovens will never be able to heat your home better. Electric fireplaces will always outperform them. Let’s examine why this is.
It is important to keep in mind that most electric stoves work by conduction. This means the metal coil in contact with the pan is what transfers heat to it for cooking. If you were to remove the pot or pan from the coil, the coil would do a very poor job of radiating heat out into the air. They simply aren’t designed with this in mind.
Electric heaters work by convection. This means that cool air is made warm inside of the fireplace, released back into the room, and that hot air warms the air around it. While a convection oven works in a similar way with the air inside of the oven, it is weak in comparison to an electric fireplace and won’t efficiently heat the room with the oven doors open, and it especially won’t efficiently heat the rest of the house. The interior of the oven is heavily lined with material to retain as much heat as possible. Due to this, they don’t need a very powerful heater compared to an electric fireplace.
Electric fireplaces for living rooms, particularly the high-end ones, have very powerful heaters and they are designed to efficiently heat an entire room and sometimes an entire room. In the same way, the heating element warms the air inside of the oven, electric fireplaces warm the air inside of the room. They are just capable of doing this at a much larger scale efficiently.
For all of these reasons, electric fireplaces will always heat your home better than any electric stove or electric oven can. The latter two should only be used in emergencies where you have no other way to heat yourself when it is cold. Doing so for any significant amount of time will result in insanely high power bills and likely a damaged range because they aren’t built to be used like that for a long time.
Choosing to heat your home with stoves or ovens is about as effective as trying to cool your home by opening your Frigidaire refrigerator. It just isn’t very effective and will cost you more trouble than it is worth.
Is it dangerous to heat your home with a gas stove?
There are several types of gas stoves. Ones that are hooked up to your home’s gas lines are the most common. You can also find gas stoves that hook up to a propane tank or canister.
No matter what, you should absolutely never use a gas stove or oven to heat your home. While these are fine for cooking in the kitchen, trying to heat your home with the stove or by leaving the oven open is a recipe for tragedy. These gas stoves can allow noxious fumes like carbon monoxide to fill the home. This will lead to deadly carbon monoxide poisoning. Never use gas stoves or ovens to warm your home.
How Do Wood Stoves Work?
Backpacking in the wilderness, you might come upon a small cabin with a wood stove. While these are great for a home in the wilderness that doesn’t have any utilities, they aren’t really ideal for a normal home.
Essentially, with these, you pile wood inside of these stoves and burn the wood. Heat radiates from the sides and top of the stove. This serves the dual purpose of heating the room and giving you a stove top to do some basic cooking on. You have to be careful because the metal surface all around the stove can easily burn you if touched.
Coal stoves work in much the same way, except coal is your fuel source instead of wood. These burn more efficiently, but again, aren’t ideal for a normal home with utility hookups.
Both of these stoves can make the room entirely too hot in a small enclosed space.
What Are All of The Different Benefits You Get From Owning An Electric Fireplace?
Now that we have settled that electric fireplaces are a way better way to warm your property, let’s check some of their other benefits:
- Realistic Flame Simulation – While the lower-end electrical fireplaces are going to have a lot of issues with terrible flame effects, the top-of-the-line electrical fireplaces look incredibly authentic and realistic. Many of them have effects that will give you the impression you’re sitting right in front of a fireplace that normally burns wood. The very best fireplaces will have 3D holograms projected inside of them, with embers and flames that dance around in front of you. If they are really good, they will also let you choose between multiple different flame projections to set the perfect mood.
- Auditory Simulation – Flame effects go a long way to selling the authentic fireplace experience, however, audio is where the experience is really driven home. By playing the real sound of burning logs with all of their snaps and pops, the soothing experience of a relaxing fireplace is complete. When it comes to high-end fireplaces, people who visit you won’t even make the connection that you have an electric fireplace unless they really examine it closely.
- Installation Simplicity – One of many homeowner’s favorite benefits of purchasing an electric fireplace is how dead simple it is to install one. Sure, you can make it a bigger project and insert the fireplace two feet off of the wall into a recessed wall feature, but for most electric fireplaces, you set it where you want it and push the plug into the nearest wall socket. That is about it.
- Environmentally Friendly – In a world that is increasingly becoming environmentally conscious out of necessity, electric fireplaces fit right in with your green home. They are far and away the uppermost cost-effective choice if you want to heat your home using a fireplace. They are built to be efficient with energy usage. They also obviously don’t emit any kind of noxious fumes or smoke like traditional fireplaces do.
- Low Heating Bill – The efficient green technology has a huge benefit: the deep savings on your heating bill. You can further the savings if you place more than one electric fireplace in different rooms around the house. Keep doors shut and only turn a fireplace on when you are in the room. Turn it off when you leave. By heating a smaller space and allowing the parts of your house that are unused to remain cooler, your heating bill will thank you. It’s common for the deep savings to eventually surpass the cost of the fireplace when you purchase it.
- Remote Convenience – It is rare to buy an electric fireplace and it does not come with its own remote control. If they don’t include a remote, they will usually have an application you install on your phone or tablet so you can control it via BlueTooth or wifi. If you use a remote or an app to control your fireplace with Bluetooth or wifi, you can expect to be able to effectively turn it on and off from any room, set its thermostat just right, and toggle between any additional features the electric fireplace you bought comes with.
Is It Good To Spend More On A High-End Electrical Fireplace?
Like many important things in life, when it comes to electrical fireplaces, what you pay for is what you usually get.
Because of this fact, you will never regret investing more money into a better-quality fireplace. Instead of simply picking up the cheapest electric fireplace you can find at the big box store down the street or online, first come up with the maximum possible budget you can spare for your fireplace. Then find the best fireplace you can for that money. If you are worried that your budget is a tad too high, just remember those deep savings once you switch your home to electric fireplace heating. It is even worth saving up a little bit longer so that you can afford one of the highest quality electric fireplaces you can find like a MagikFlame electric fireplace.
Why Is MagikFlame Such A Popular Choice?
There are several different reasons that people have to decide whether MagikFlame is the right fireplace to put inside their home. Here are just a few of those reasons:
- Futuristic 3D Holoflame Technology – MagikFlame boasts 30 different super realistic flame effects that users can switch to at a moment’s notice. Not only do the flames realistically flicker and fling off random embers, but the holograms are projected against a true log set that physically sits inside the fireplace.
- Real Log Crackling Sounds – What is more satisfying to the fireplace experience than the sound of a crackling log to go with the flames? MagikFlame has different sounds to choose from with the click of a button, including some fun nature sounds.
- Powerfully Efficient Infrared Quartz Heater – A 5,200 BTU heater is the only source you will need to easily keep over 1,000 square feet of your home incredibly cozy and warm. One single 5,200 BTU MagikFlame modern infrared fireplace can warm an entire apartment or small home. If you have a bigger home, you can get additional fireplaces for even better supplemental zone heating.
- Intuitive Smartphone Application Controls – The smartphone app that each MagikFlame unit can be controlled by has every single feature at your fingertips. You don’t need to get up from your seat if you want to turn it on, or off, set the temperature, change the flame style, toggle the audio, or anything else. If you have a zone heating system with multiple fireplaces, you can control each fireplace from the same app. Are you leaving a room to go into another room for an hour? Before you get up, turn the fireplace in one room off and the next room on. Wait a minute before entering and you won’t ever be walking into a cold room.
- Plug or Hard Wiring Options – Some people don’t have an outlet nearby or they want to hide the wiring in the wall directly behind the fireplace. This is no problem at all. MagikFlame allows you to plug it into an outlet, or hard wire it directly into electrical lines you run to it behind the drywall.
- Room Placement Freedom – No venting means no restrictions to what room you want it in. If you have a big house, put one in the living room, dining room (electric fireplaces in dining room are elegant and cozy), bedrooms (If you want an electric fireplace in bedroom – see here), or any other room.
