DR. INFRARED HEATER DR-988 240V Electric Industrial Garage, Workshop, Warehouse, Construction Heater, 5600W, Thermostat 37-113 °F, Portable, Wall Ceiling Mount

First off, this is a great little unit. It kicks off a ton of heat, and if its setup right, it's super easy to use and has some great features. The first thing to know: don't use the internal thermostat. The concept is simply flawed because it's internal and the unit generally sits high in the space it's heating. It means that no matter how high you set the temp using the internal thermostat, it will likely trigger the off way before the space is actually to temp. You NEED to buy the associated Dr. Infrared thermostat - it works great when it's setup correctly - BUT YOU HAVE TO SET IT UP RIGHT. Follow the instructions, use the red and black leads on the back of the unit and run the cables properly to the wall thermostat. Locate the wall thermostat somewhere else where it's not being directly blown on by the heater. Switch the heater to "external" thermostat using the toggle on the back and boom - you're good to go. It works like a charm and is super accurate. I have my wall thermostat set to 50 degrees F and my mercury-based thermometer I keep in the same space says 50 on the money. That automatically cycles the unit on/off as needed. Just know that you still need to use the remote to turn the unit ON once even after setting up the wall thermostat. From then on you only need to use the remote if you want to turn the unit off. When using the "wall thermostat" feature, the remote cannot be used to control the temp. I leave the unit on HIGH - that gives you the full 7000+ watt experience you came for. The thing heats up my garage in like 5-10 minute cycles even when it's in the negatives in Minnesota. It's great, super reliable. The thing I really am amazed by is how well these electric heaters compare to natural gas heaters. Not only are they literally 1/10 the cost ($200 to $300 vs $2000 - $3000 for gas), they are so much smaller and don't require me to run costly gas lines into my garage - which is especially difficult for me considering my garage is detached. I have a 70 amp sub-panel in my garage so this was literally a perfect fit. Also, last thoughts. Use the appropriate gauged wiring. I got a 40 amp double pole breaker and it works great for this. It needs 2 hots and a ground to operate correctly in HIGH - which is the best situation. Some people have noticed it kicking into low randomly even when connected properly. If this is happening, it's a known manufacturing defect with a previous version - so if you have this happening just get in contact with them and they'll send you a newer model. I did not have this issue so 5 stars for me. By far the hardest part is figuring out the wall thermostat. It's a little tough to to get the black and red leads into the back of the machine. The instructions for the wall therm also suck - but that's not the unit's fault. Overall a great machine. High output, easy to install and use, and electric so very convenient and let's face it - future proof. Everything is going to be electric in 20 years. Get ahead of the curve.

I've had the Dr. Heater DR966 for 2 weeks. It was easy to install and within about 10 minutes of turning it on I realized it would be a gamechanger for my garage workshop (in Montana). The garage is well insulated but was otherwise unheated. Normally when outdoor temperatures dip to zero, the garage temperature drops to around freezing, which basically made it useless for trying to use hand tools with bare hands. The new Dr. Heater puts out plenty of heat. I generally run it at 6000 watts for about 20 minutes and then drop it back to 3000 watts and back off on the thermostat. Then I stay out there in comfort for hours... My only very minor concern with the construction of this unit is that a sharp sheet metal screw sticks into the enclosure for the wire connections. Although unlikely, I figured that it was possible for a wire to come in contact with the sharp screw point and combined with years of vibration from the fan, the wire insulation could erode and allow a short. I fixed this by simply reversing the screw so that the point was on the outside. I would not at all consider that screw a reason not to buy this unit. The general quality seems very good. I'm sure every garage heater has some kind of manufacturing quirk. I chose this unit because I noticed that there were very few reviews describing outright failures, unlike many of the other space heaters on Amazon. I made a guess that because this one was lower cost and simpler that it may therefore be less prone to failure. So far, so good. I currently have complete confidence in what I've bought. As far as wiring, I noticed 10 gauge wiring in the unit. I already had approximately 15 feet of 10 gauge AWG coming from my circuit box and a 30A 240V breaker. I've used this heater a lot the last 2 weeks without tripping the circuit breaker or heating up the wiring. Would I buy it again???: YES. P.S.: I made the effort to give you a thorough review because I literally read about 100 outstanding reviews about this and other space heaters.

The positives are a good price and a heater that throws out quite a lot of heat. It is rated for 5600 watts at 240 volts, which is close to 20,000 BTU's. That is similar to many small gas heaters. Keep in mind that you need to use #10 wire and have a dedicated 30 amp circuit breaker in order to use this heater. It seems to work well and appears pretty well made, but only time will tell. There are a couple of issues, however. As the picture and manual make clear, this does not have an on-off switch. Instead, it only as an adjustable thermostat. The manual recommends unplugging it when not in use, which can be a little inconvenient and does put wear and tear on the large 30 amp power needed for this heater. The specs indicate the thermostat is rated for minimum on temperature of 37F, so if you leave it plugged in and the area gets below that, it will come on when you are not present. I have not verified the accuracy of the thermostat. The heater's fan is quite loud, so if you need a quiet area, that could be a problem. I also had a great deal of trouble registering the product on the company's website. One of the information fields on the registration webform (owner's telephone number) would not accept my number telling me to enter the correct format without specifying what format is required. After spending a lot of time guessing about the format, I finally got the correct one and it accepted the registration. I told customer support about their web problem and they did not seem interested in helping. They suggested a solution, but it did not work.

I bought and installed this heater just before the Snow was predicted to hit Southern Alabama in 2025. It arrived well packaged from the manufacturer. Installed it in a 20x40 metal shop building, 10' walls. 3 inches closed cell spray foam in the ceiling and 2 inches in the walls. 3 double paned windows, 2 insulated man doors and a 16' x 8' insulated garage door. Admittedly, a little undersized, but I was hopping to avoid a big wiring expense, and it worked. I picked this heater for several reason, even though it was one of the more expensive models for its ratings. 1- 6000 watts vs 5000 for most of the under 30 amp draw heaters. 2- it came with a sturdy wall mounting bracket, I didn't have to make a ceiling mount. 3-I can add an external thermostat without having to add relays etc. That does require rewiring the supply line however. 4-No complaints of it being loud. It is noticeable when it comes on, but I can still hear the shop radio, and the heater is between my workbench and the speakers. 5- Good previous reviews. Bottom line- It works very well. It would heat the shop to 70 plus if I wanted it too. I turned it off in the evenings after I was done. The coldest overnight was 19 degrees outside, the shop was 49 inside. The day never got above 24 degrees. Turned on the heater, within an hour it was in the 60s inside and steadily warming up. I wired the heater to a flexible cable and ran it to a plug and outlet, In the picture of the heater, behind it is a little black box, that is the garage door opener, it has a thermometer built into it, and its temporarily mounted 8' up. The close up shows it at 76 degrees. The heater is mounted about 7' up. The round thermometer is in the coldest part of the shop, furthest from the heater, and it is 69 degrees or so and that is about 5' above the floor. At those settings, the heater ran about 35-40 minutes of every hour. I also ran a little battery powered Makita fan on low pointed up into the ceiling space to circulate the heated air up there back down, it made a noticeable difference. All in all, I'm pleased with the product and would recommend it.

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.

This item was a disappointment. I purchased this to use in a small garage where I have two 50-amp 240VAC outlets installed. I occasionally use a basic 1500-watt 120VAC ceramic heater in the space to make it more comfortable and ensure the temperature is within a useful range for setting glue or curing paint. The small 1500-watt appliance works well enough, so I imagined that the Dr. INFRARED 5600-watt heater would be a great upgrade. I was excited about the idea that the heavy-duty 240-volt wiring I have could be put to good use while freeing up a 110-volt circuit. To make a long story short, the DR. INFRARED HEATER DR-988 240V Electric Industrial Garage heater did not put out as much heat as the little 1500-watt 120-volt heater. The heating elements got much hotter, but the blower fan was blowing air at such a high volume that the output of air felt lukewarm at best and cool at worst. I used a temperature gun to find that the heating elements were over 400 degrees Fahrenheit, but I also measured the air output and observed that it was 20-30 degrees cooler than the air coming out of the 1500-watt heater. So, what's the point? I have a rock-solid 50-amp supply. I purchased a NEMA 6-50P to 6-30R adapter. The quality control sticker says my specific DR. INFRARED HEATER DR-988 was tested as drawing 5618 watts, but the design of the system is not effective at converting that energy into warm air. I cannot justify using storage space for it if it is not going to work well. I am sending the heater and the adapter back. I don't understand how the potential to make a 240-volt high-amperage heater could result in the performance I encountered. I feel like it was a waste of time and effort for the manufacturer and distributor. This product would only make sense to me if it were sold in a market where 240 volts is the norm, and if the item were not offered as a high-power upgrade over generic 120-volt appliances. Thank you.

This has worked out great for me so far. I have a 20ftx20ft attached garage with 11ft ceilings that is only partially insulated. (mostly not insulated) So far I have only used this in the low 30's but it performs like I would expect. Within about an hour the room is warm enough that I don't need a jacket. After about two hours the built in thermostat begins kicking on and off. This replaces a Dual Tank Top Propane heater that was listed at a max of 30k BTU's. I would not typically run that wide open because it burned way to much fuel way too fast that way. This unit is around the 20k BTU mark and heats the garage in a similar manor. I have read some reviews where people seem to expect a stream of hot air similar to a big propane/kerosene bullet heater and that is not what you get. This is a steady stream of warm air that is going to take a bit to heat a space. That being said it does exactly what I want and for the money its seems to be the highest power/best cost combination I could find that also had mostly positive reviews. Note: I am not an electrician so please consult a pro and don't take my word for anything: One of the biggest points of confusion for me when deciding to order this unit was the conflicting reviews/posts some indicating the need for a 30 amp service and others a 35 amp services. I can confirm it requires a dedicated 35 amp service (not 30 amp). If I am not mistaken this heater is considered a continuous load. With a continuous load you are only allowed to load a circuit to 80% of its listed capacity. At 6000 WATTS that's 25 amps. 80% of 30 amps is 24 not 25 amps and thus the need to go up to a 35 amp service. With that in mind I can see why some people report plugging it into a 30 amp service with no problem but it would (in my limited understanding) be wrong and depending on circumstances potentially dangerous. Again don't take my word for it - the manual says 35 amps

Facile d'installation. Manette fournit avec la fournaise facile a comprendre.

Installed into a 650 Sqft, 3-bay Insulated garage. Unless its below -20 degrees Celsius, it does a fine job of warming up garage to work in or melt snow off the cars. If you have steel garage doors that are not insulated, you should at a minimum start there with 4'x8' sheets of foil-backed styrofoam insulation that you can cut into pieces to snap into the door sectionals and tape the seams. Throwing up fiberglass bats between the wall studs is a very quick job. Drywall is an added bonus. This is an expensive unit to run, so you will make back what ever you spend on insulation. Highly recommended you use 10/2 or 8/2 armored cable to hard wire it. At 240v, you don't want to ever nick a a flexible dryer type plug cord. That voltage is enough to knock your balance off a ladder. I installed a mini 2-space breaker panel in the garage, wired to the main panel with 10/3 wire. (You should not bunch high current cables with other cables back to the main panel. Stove and Dryer runs are always given their own stud holes and space to avoid over heating). In the mini-breaker panel I plugged in a 15-30-30-15 quad breaker. The 30-30 is tied together for 240v and acts like a switch for the heater. Extra piece of mind, the heater has no power. The other two 15 breakers, I use for 2 additional 15a dedicated 120v outlets for tools. Obviously, I can't use them when the heater is in 6,000w mode, but they can be used at same time at 3,000w mode, or whenever the heater is off. The heater looks great and runs quiet, and the thermostat works accurately. I have left it on for 3 days at a time with no issues. You should run at 80% capacity for a 240v-30a (7,200w) circuit. And 6,000w is very close to that. As others have mentioned, you won't find a 35a breaker. Highly recommended purchase.

It was installed one and half month ago. I was waiting until the cold hit the city and it did. Outside today is -21. My 2 car garage I setup the thermostat to 66f. Man what a big different. The garage is always kept on the same temp and it feels good when everything in the garage not supper cold as it used to be. I can make the temp higher but anything above 0 is good for me. I recommended to anyone looking for comfort and make the garage the place you don’t hate every time you go out of your house door.

I had a 4800 watt electric heater in my garage and did a decent job heating it but I needed something with a little more power. I know I should have gas for something this big but until then I'm very satisfied. Gets it up to 20 degrees from about 5 degrees in a couple hours. The fan is more powerful than the 4800 so it moves more air, however it is noisier but it's a garage and I'm not reading books out there, I'm wrenching on cars so it doesn't matter to me. Also, the thermostat knob feels a little flimsy but it's doing it's job. Overall, I like the heater and we'll see on longevity and durability. I'll update as I've only had it a month. Update: First cold winter in northern Ontario. Kept my garage at 10 C at lower setting until I needed it to work out there. Turned it on high, went to 20 C in 2 hours. Working like a champ and I'm using it daily. Wasn't crazy on electric bill either. Best purchase. Still will update if it fails.

It works very well to remove the Humidity out of the Garage in Spring or the Fall Seasons but it does not totally heat the Garage in the Winter.