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I originally bought the Fire Sense Commercial Patio Heater (see my review of it). I was extremely disappointed in that product. It was absolutely not worth it! The parts were poorly made. It was almost impossible to put the heat shield together since the small nuts & bolts were not long enough to fit through 3 pieces of metal. After numerous attempts to make it work, I boxed it up and sent it back. To give you some sense of what a pain it was to put that heater together, the same day as I put that patio heater together, I also assembled a Weber Gas Grill. My father and I had more trouble putting the patio heater together than we did the finely crafted Weber Grill! Now with a new beautiful grill and no patio heater, I was then going to order a patio heater from Restoration Hardware since I thought they would offer a higher quality product. What I discovered when looking at their specs, the heater they offered was actually this same Fire Sense Deluxe Patio Heater offered on Amazon for $50 more then the FS Commercial Heater. Restoration Hardware offered the Deluxe heater for $449, but did include a cover with it. I opted to order the unit from Amazon at $304.00 and it arrived yesterday. I immediately noticed the quality of parts is much higher than the Fire Sense Commercial unit, and the heat shield went together without a glitch almost, you do have to push hard to get a couple of those bolts through 3 pieces of metal, but much better on this Deluxe heater. The Deluxe heater's heat shield is also better designed as it has fewer pieces. Overall this new Deluxe heater went together smoothly, except for one MAJOR flaw in the directions! The Deluxe Heater stand is not weighted, and there is a plastic unit on the bottom that needs be filled with sand. You should fill the plastic tote as your first step before doing anything else. I put the entire heater together & then was going to fill the plastic bottle at the end, but with the weight of the sand, I could not re-attach it (I was working by myself this time). I ended up having to take the heater apart again, so I could wrangle the base and attach the sand filled weight. The directions do not say anything about filling the plastic tote! My Deluxe Heater starts right up & provides excellent heat range!! The moral of this story is, do not try and save $50 bucks. Buy this Deluxe Patio Heater at the outset and forget about the FS Commercial unit! One other note on this Deluxe unit, to start the heater, it tells you to move the dial counterclockwise, move dial to Pilot position, and hear 2 clicking sounds. I only hear one click on my unit & need to move past Pilot to the low position for it to light. It does immediately light up & produces excellent heat. I would give this unit 5 stars, except they need to change their directions to tell you about the sand weight unit on the stand base! Enjoy!
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I did a bit of research on patio heaters and finally settled on this one. The review from KLV is spot on. Just a few other comments:
1. I agree that this model really is worth the extra $50 (at least at the time of my purchase). I have assembled a lot of things in my time and this product clearly has high quality parts.
2. The only catch is filling the base with sand. I am sure there is a better technique but (as I don't live near a beach) simply pouring dry sand into the base was not an option. Give yourself a good 1/2 hour to manually stuff wet playground sand into the base (as was my only option from the local Lowes/Home Depot). I suppose you could pour gravel into it but considering this thing is going to be literally on fire, I wanted the most weight possible to hold it down.
3. As KLV noted, the directions are good but not great. I missed the small note to bolt the propane tank fasteners down before attaching the ballast. Not a huge deal but I did have to do some disassembly/re-assembly to put them in.
4. *****IMPORTANT***** I wasted about a half hour trying to light this for the first time. When I read the reviews I missed this point. The directions are wrong. KLV pointed out you need to turn the dial past the "Pilot" setting to the "Low" setting for it to actually ignite. Once you do, it fires right up. Fire Sense and Amazon should send whoever KLV is a big gift certificate because I probably would not have figured this out and would have tried to return what is now an 8' patio heater.
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Please read the review by KLV. My review assumes you read that review first. Rather than repeat what KLV said, let me embellish where I can. Let's start with the fact the heater seems very sturdy and works pretty well, though I've only used it once. Construction seems solid and unit is stable when assembled correctly. If I needed another one, I'd have no problem buying the unit again. That said, the directions are terrible so I'll toss in a few things not in the KLV review.
My unit came partly assembled which doesn't match the directions. The notes below correspond to the steps and part numbers in the directions.
Step 0: There is no mention in the directions of needing to fill the "water box" with sand. The "water box" (Part #23, the thing you fill with sand) on my unit was already attached to the unit. Detach this from the stainless steel base and fill it first. Once it's filled but before you re-install it, attach the wheel assembly and put on the tank base supports (Step 1, Part #22 in the directions). Once these are on, reattach the "water box". If you have a table or bench, put the water box on the bench and then put the base over it. Slide one side of the base just off the table so you can reach the first screw. Using an electric screwdriver in one hand, slide one of the nuts from the bottom of the water base into the hexagon shaped hole and hold it there with your finger. Spin your screwdriver in tighten mode until the nut catches the and tighten securely. Remember that you are tightening metal against plastic so go easy on the torque. Turn the base slightly until the next screw is just off the table and repeat attaching the next nut. Do this until all four screws are tight. Then put the unit back on the ground.
Step 1: My post mounts were already loosely attached to the base. Leave these loose until you attach the post support.
Step 2: Attach post support securely (Part #10), then tighten the post mounts.
Step 3: The lower post (Part #6) is the part of the post without the instruction label. Tighten the screws evenly as you attach the lower post.
Step 7: [Have a step ladder hand for the rest of the assembly as your new heater is getting pretty tall at this point]. My gas hose assembly was in two different pieces. The upper piece was already attached to the head assembly so the head assembly hose must be fed down through the post from the top (not up from the bottom as the directions say).
Step 7a: Attach the gas regulator to the lower end of the head assembly hose which now extends a couple inches below the post support.
Step 10: Only one of my tank support mounts lines up with a hole on my tank base at a time. If that is the case with your tank, line up the one hole up with tank support opposite the wheel assembly so that when you rock the heater back on the wheels to move it the tank won't tip over and hit the cylinder cover.
Lighting instructions: Again, read the KLV review. My unit also makes just one click (this is the igniter lighting the pilot light). It will appear as if nothing happens since you can't see the pilot light. Let up on the control knob and turn the knob counter-clockwise to the left to "LOW" then press the knob back in. My heater lights first time using this procedure.
Honest reviews on Fire Sense Deluxe Propane (LP) Patio Heater w/Wheels
I had some reservations about ordering this, based on the reviews that commented about missing parts and difficult instructions. However, since it seemed to be a good quality heater, I decided to go ahead (I actually ordered two of them). Perhaps they've improved the instructions since prior reviews, but I did not find them difficult to follow. I also did not have any missing parts for either unit. All parts fit together perfectly. Both units fired right up and provided nice uniform heat. Although, I will say the lighting operation is a little strange, but it works fine once you get used to it. Overall, I'm very happy with this purchase.
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Reference the previous review about the ignition problem. It is a bit quirky, but once you get it, no problem. Just be careful if you hear the propane emitting from the burner and cannot light it soon thereafter you will want to wait a couple minutes.
Other than that, it is of quality construction and can be assembled by one person. You can tell that the directions were written in China or somewhere that is not English speaking, because there are some translation context errors in the directions. They are not huge hurdles though.
The only tidbit I have to add to the previous reviews is to be careful when tightening the bolts. DO NOT OVERTIGHTEN! You will strip the threading. When you unpack everything, make sure you have an open space, because there are a lot of parts and you do not want nuts and bolts getting kicked under a cabinet and missing something. They do not give you extra parts!
