Outdoor heater fuel types: what a product page must state

Gas heaters burn propane or butane from a cylinder, or run from a mains pipe, and electric heaters draw power through a plug or a fixed wall supply. Infrared can be either. The element may be a ceramic gas plate or a quartz or carbon tube, so the word infrared alone settles nothing about fuel.

Keep fuel and heating method in separate fields. A buyer who filters for infrared still has to find out whether the heater wants a bottle or a socket, and a page that hides it earns a return. Then add the stand. A floor-standing mushroom heater needs only space, a tabletop model needs a firm surface and a wall model needs a bracket and a drill.

The commonest wrong order is a heater bought for a gas the buyer does not own, such as a butane bottle meeting a propane-only model. A mains pipe meets a cylinder heater. The buyer finds out on the patio. The carton is open.

Connector standards differ by country. Use the name your market uses. State whether the regulator and hose are in the box, because a heater without them cannot be used on the day it arrives. If a conversion kit exists, list it as its own item, so that the buyer sees the choice before paying and the packer picks the right part.

Electric heaters live or die on supply. A buyer needs the voltage, the plug type or the fixed wiring requirement, the output in kilowatts and the length of the lead. Remote and timer go here too. A bracket on a high wall may sit a long way from the nearest outdoor socket, and the buyer will not have measured.

Outdoor rating matters as well. Show the ingress protection code the maker prints, along with the mounting method for wall and ceiling models and the weight the bracket must carry. Add nothing the data sheet does not say.

Clearance is the gap the heater needs from walls, ceilings, awnings, fences, plants and parasols, and the figure differs from model to model. Heat and flame risk sit behind those figures. Do not restate them in your own words. Copy the figure and unit from the manual, name the page it came from, and keep the PDF on file for the day a buyer asks.

Link the manual and copy the safety notes exactly as printed, including the warning boxes and the page numbers they sit on. Name a flame failure device or a tilt switch only when the maker lists one, and never describe how it works beyond the maker’s own text. Do not interpret ventilation or covered-area rules. Send buyers to the manual and, where it applies, to the local regulations for gas appliances and open flames, since the rules differ by country.

Turn fuel, gas type and connector into filters. A visitor with a butane bottle should be able to hide every propane-only model in one click, before reading a single description of any heater. Show the same fields in the basket. The wrong choice is then visible once more before payment, which beats arranging a courier collection and a refund a fortnight later.

Add a returns reason code for wrong fuel. Count it by model. A cluster on one model usually means a field is missing from its page, or buried so far down that buyers never reach it. Fix the page, then watch the count.

Open your five best-selling heater pages and read them as a stranger would, noting every fuel, power or clearance question that the page leaves unanswered. Fix the worst page first.