RugbuddyTM 165w Under Rug Space Heater, 3' X 5' Review

Customer Ratings:

Bought the rugbuddy to warm the oriental carpet in my attic office. We have a 100 year old house with cold wood floors, and thought this would be just the trick.

After getting the rugbuddy set up under my carpet and turning it on, I was surprised how long it took to warm the carpet and floors at least 4 hours. But this is probably a function of how much cold floor it has to warm. After leaving it on for a full day, my workspace was warm and toasty, and even my shoes would get warm while I work. I guess that's pretty good for 165 watts of heating.

I would love it if Rugbuddy sold a carpet pad to go under the heating pad, ideally with foil facing this would definitely help it to warm faster and send more heat upward.

All in all, a very good purchase.

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Hi, the small living room in my basement apartment gets cold because it lacks the house water radiators found in my other rooms. I hoped putting a 3'x5' RugBuddy (RB) under a rug, added to my current 1500W Lasko silent electric heater, would be enough to keep the 14'x11' room warm. Short version: it'll heat the rug, but won't raise the room temp, even in a small room. A standard portable oil-filled radiator will do more to heat a room.

Long version: Once I had the funds -this thing ain't cheap -I bought this size RugBuddy, and the recommended KlimaGrip rug pad and PlugBuddy thermostat directly from Speedheat. Once received on a warmish winter day, I laid the thing out and plugged it in. An hour later, I could feel slight heat if I pressed my hand down on the RB. About the same heat as an electric blanket on its very lowest setting, much less heat than a heated car seat. At about an inch above, barely any heat could be felt. I figured it was defective and called the company's support line. After I briefly explained the problem, customer support guy asked if I could feel any heat at all. Yes, I answered, but not much. Then he began to tell me how I needed to understand that this product only uses 165W so it won't be as powerful as other heaters. The spiel was delivered as if he said it dozens of times a day to similarly disappointed customers. I figured at that point, this product was a dud. Customer support guy said that the RB works better if actually placed under a rug and above the rug pad. Okay, I'll try it. But it made no real difference. Before I returned it, I wanted to measure the temperature using the thermometer on the PlugBuddy thermostat (which by the way, is a not-repackaged LuxPro PSP300, LuxPro PSP300 Programmable Digital Thermostat currently for sale on Amazon for half the price). I took a temperature reading of the rug, then I installed the pad and RugBuddy and put the rug on top, then waited 2.5 hours, then took more temp readings. Since I couldn't find any independent reviews with details or temp figures before buying, I've decided to write this review to help others.

The results:

-Starting temp of rug & rest of room: 65 degrees

-Temp if thermometer placed on rug with RB and pad, after 2.5 hours: 78 degrees

-Temp if thermometer placed six inches above rug with RB and pad, after 2.5 hours: 67 degrees

-Temp in room, on table a few feet away: 65 degrees

So the rug itself was 13 degrees warmer, but six inches right above it was only 2 degrees warmer. For 200 bucks, I expected more than two degrees half a foot above the rug. I wouldn't be disappointed if this thing were advertised for just warming a rug, which it does. But the advertising and labeling implies it'll actually help heat a room (e.g. "Save energy by only heating the rooms you are using"; "Space heater" labeling.) It's not a space heater, it's a rug warmer. If you lie on the floor a lot for some reason, it might be worth it. But if you're hoping to help heat a small room, even just raising the room temp a few degrees, don't waste your time and money on this. It won't help. I doubt bigger RBs would make any difference either in terms of a room's temp.

The company did accept a return and gave me a refund without any trouble though. By the way, the Lasko 5620-series heater, Lasko Products 5620 Space Heater Electric Portable Beautiful High Quality Excellent Performance, works really well. It just isn't powerful enough to heat the room fully on its own.

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I had a rug pad already, so I separated the rug (It's a thick carpet rug) and placed the rugbuddy in between the pad and the rug. The instruction says to lay on it for more than 5 min, so I did. I started feeling the warmth of the filament within a few minutes, but not enough to generate heat into the rug. But probably 15min or so later, the rug was nice and toasty...my cats started gathering on it and I was too! I love that it's safe and totally silent(obviously). Now I can be away and still leave plenty of warm spots for my kitties. Money well spent!

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SpeedHeat Rugbuddy 370 Under Rug Space Heater, 5' X 7'I first saw/heard of rug heaters being used in the very small rooms in Japan. We bought our first one because of a huge increase in our electric bill after a garage conversion to office space where an electric heater was installed. The cement slab seems to hold the heat when using the rug buddy and work well under our old wool area rugs. The room has good insulation and double paned windows. During the spring and fall we have been only using one (5'x7')of the two rug heaters and the space has been comfortable (temperate climate of 35-45 night temps and 50-70 daytime temps). The space is 10x15 feet with standard 8 foot ceilings.

We liked the effect of using the rug heaters in the office so got a rug heater for our living room. Our living room is approximately the same size as the office space with wood floors. The 2x7 1/2' heater in the living room takes the chill off the living room this fall. We have the timers set to turn the heaters on an hour and half before we get home from work or up in the morning. So far we haven't felt the need to turn on our furnace. As a supplemental heat source the rug heaters are working well for us.

Although an investment, if the rugheaters help lower our fuel oil usage by only one tank the rug heaters will have paid for themselves and put some cash in our pockets. For our old small house the floor heaters are great.

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I have a heated floor in my bathroom. We also have a small unheated fully enclosed sun porch. The porch is attached to the house on two walls, has an 8' ceiling and consists of a ceramic tile floor and 6 double pane e-glass floor to ceiling vinyl windows on two outside walls. In the winter the porch gets cold. So I saw this Rug Buddy on Amazon and figured it'd work like the heated floor in my bathroom except the heating element is of course above the tiles rather than below. I saw descriptive words like, "space heater" "toasty" "radiant floor heater" "like an electric blanket" and figured this thing would be just the ticket to take the chill off our porch. Amazon recommended I get the Lux plug-in thermostat too, so I did. A few hundred bucks later the stuff arrives and the instructions say I need a rug pad to separate the rug buddy from the floor. Ok, so I pop $$ for that too. After laying it all down, plugging it in and waiting 24 hours all I can say is, where's the heat? I mean seriously, a $20.00 candle would put out more BTUs than this ridiculous thing and at least the candle would smell nice too. The Lux thermostat which I set at 68 degrees is utterly useless because the room can barely muster 48 degrees and that's with the Rug Buddy on for hours and sun shining in. So here's the deal folks, I'm being charitable by saying that what the Rug Buddy really is, is a rug warmer, not a rug heater. Nor is it a space heater or what I would define as a "heater" of any sort. Unless your idea of heat is to get down on all fours, place the palms of your hands on the carpet and say, hmmmmm? I think it's warm, sort of, I guess. Any electric blanket you've ever experienced puts out a lot more heat than this thing does, heated car seats do too. The bottom line is, if you want to throw a rug on your floor then make it juuust warm enough to take the chill off then the Rug Buddy is for you. Pretty expensive for such a tepid result methinks.