While not related to vintage radios (well, sort of), I picked up a beautiful vintage/antique "LOVE" brand electric heater for $40 from a car-boot sale yesterday (fully working too!). It's the kind with a copper bowl, and a ceramic "bulb" with coiled wire wrapped around it as a heating element. It's on an unusual base, which appears to be some kind of cast metal, and has been painted gold on the outside - I'm not sure if the paint is original or not though.

It has two brass badges on the bottom of the cage that read:

Electrical & Radio Engineers
W-HARRY-WILLS
60-62 GOULBURN St. Sydney

THE "LOVE" HIGH EFFICIENCY
ELECTRIC RADIATOR
JOHN LOVE & SONS LTD. SYDNEY
WATTS [900] VOLTS [ ] PATENT APPLIED FOR

Does anyone know anything about this? I'm particularly interested in the age. Also, what's the common mode of failure for the coiled heating element (if they fail)? It's quite thick wire, but I imagine it would still weaken and break similar to the tungsten filament in an incandescent light bulb.

Having been labelled as using 900 watts of power, am I correct in assuming that it's more efficient than my 2kW electric fan heater? The bowl on this thing can radiate the heat across a room and is absolutely amazing for such an old and presumably inefficient heater.

Fan heaters are one of the more inefficient types of heating because they do not radiate their energy. They merely heat air that is sucked through it by the fan. Because air is a very quick heat exchanger, it rapidly cools once it leaves a fan heater. The heater pictured has what is nicknamed a beehive element. Because it is bare it is a more efficient type of heater.

Beware though, these heaters present a few dangers. The most obvious is the bare element - a type of variable resistor, depending on which part of it a finger or metallic object touches. It will either be 0 volts, 240 volts or somewhere in between. The other danger is that these were not fitted with tilt switches or microtemps. Smother one of these or knock it over and a fire is almost guaranteed.

This is an appliance that is definitely best kept for display purposes. Your display will be complete if you can find a rare two-element heater to sit beside it.

Had one of those at home when I was a kid and it was an antique even then. Era would be 1920s/30s.

Unusual to find one with a cord still attached, as the original would have been cloth covered and would probably have had a death plug on it to boot. The one that is attached to yours isn't retained securely.

As per Brad's comments, they are quite inefficient and unsafe by today's standards. I agree that it should be a display only unit.

Nice score but yeah Id keep it for show only

the heater is a big, some what expose power resistor (like the old Jugs)
nichrome wire Id suppose, not sure of anything else used for heating elements as far as wire's concerned ? open to comment on that

as GTC said the mains lead is in a dangerous condition really & I doubt its earthed looking at it,(that raisers a few points with an exposed element)

As Brad more or less said, it wouldn't meet todays safety Specs & risky to use these days ...well it was then but nobody thought too hard about safety back then..lest we did have an Earth system that was (hopefully) more often utilised for its purpose in being

Sorry no Idea on its history thought yes it would be interesting...we use to make so many things here

Edit
I dont know but yeah its possible they could develop hot spots in the wire I suppose ..due possibly to contaminants

As stated above, do be very careful if you use it. A friend of my mom's set fire to his house by accident with a more modern thermostat controlled portable electric heater. He was moving some stuff in his basement, in front of the heater, which he forgot was plugged in. Later, it gets cold in that basement, heater thermostat turns it on, and sets fire to stuff immediately in front of it....

I then got rid of similar heaters in my place, keeping only the ones that look like a big old style steam radiator. Those don't have any glowing elements, and no part gets too hot to touch.

As the power cord looks new, I'd just as soon remove it completely, making this thing a display only antique.

Thanks for the advice all! It'd look good in a display with one of the old oscillating fans from the era - the shiny black ones with brass blades and cage.

Chris

Most welocme mate

seem just be careful with that type of stuff too
as in those days Asbestos was well used product for its flame resistance properties..