Anyone used Rointe heaters?

Jonna_935 · 24 December 2013 at 8:17PM

So oil and LPG are fine! Working a treat! ...oh no, there's an electric pump in the system!

Uggg! That's the problem, they all rely on electric, one way or another. Reminds me of an old lady who once suggested to me to boil water in the microwave during a powercut!

You haven't mentioned whether the bungalw has a fireplace+chimney. If it has then you have the possibility of installing a wood burning stove as a back-up in case of elec. failure and maybe a supplement to the elec. heating. Being in a rural location you may have access to timber that's just lying around - needs some work collecting and sawing up though. We live in such a location and have a stove but only as back-up as I prefer a more uniform temperature distribution than is provided by a stove. I have neighbours, though, who cut their oil consumption considerably by burning wood.

Thanks for considering 'back-up' heating...YES it has a wood burner already installed, so that's a plus. I think, like you, I would only use it as back-up during a powercut, such as the many unfortunate people this evening are suffering in the South of the country....Christmas Eve...what poor timing.

A chimney without an effective restrictor where outside air does vent into the room would lose 8kWh per 24 hours of heat...

Thanks for pointing this out....as it has a stove with a door, fingers crossed this is OK.

Rointe, as is the case with 6 or so other brands of a similar nature can and do work economically and well in an uber insulated dwellings .. .. but its down to the dwellings capacity to hold heat .. .. not the heatings ability to perform economically with comfort. You are in a position where because the purchase & install cost is already factored in where, you would be better on a suck~it~and~see 4 month trial, an EPC would have given a 'rough guide' 'clue' to cost.

I do not know completely how well the house is insulated. I expect the walls are the same 80's cavity, but all the windows are new double glazing and the loft is re-insulated (I could always top it up). I must sort out an EPC.

Thanks everyone for your comments :T.

It's nearly Christmas....so....please leave your keyboards and enjoy the Christmas festivities :j!!

Thanks again all.

Jonna_935

penrhyn · 28 January 2014 at 1:04PM

You are quite correct, Rointe heaters are well over 100% efficient and use half the power of other heaters to heat your home. and using a digital thermo peltier discriminator they only use the electricity generated by solar panels or wind turbines.
Only a fool would use anything else.

Mummy_george · 13 February 2014 at 2:49PM

Hi please could someone help. I used to have economy 7 heating, it was useless house was constantly freezing. This was changed to Rointe heating last December and 2 solar panels to heat the water not the heating. Our housing came out yesterday and said to check that we are paying the correct tariff and not still on economy 7 tariff. We have been paying around £100 a week electricity in winter months, the same as we did on our economy 7 accept we are now heating a 6 bedroom not a 3 bedroom. I have spoken to my supplier and they know nothing about what type of tariff I should be on so someone is coming out next week to change me from economy 7 rate to a standard rate. Does anyone know what rate I should be on please with these heaters? She did say economy 10 was another option. I don't want to loose use of heating during the day.

penrhyn · 13 February 2014 at 3:48PM

You may want to re read your post as it does not make too much sense.
One thing is certain, a well designed electric heating system using storage heaters, on an economy 7 tarriff would cost less to run than your Rointe panel heaters.
You should be on a normal single rate tarriff with this type of system.

Is this a council property?

Richie-from-the-Boro · 13 February 2014 at 6:33PM

Your supplier will neither know nor care about which type of tariff you should be on, that's your decision, you ask for what suits your needs and they supply it. You appear to have built 3 extra bedrooms in the same house, or have moved from an E7 3 bedroom house to a solar water and on-peak direct acting [not storage] electric heaters.

E10 is just E7 for 3 extra hours during the daytime. Like penrhyn - I'm struggling to understand your post, but welcome to the forum Mummy george.

Neil040 · 5 March 2014 at 4:45PM

Just joined so I could post this here and see any opinions on the plan I am thinking of. Thanks to all very useful posts about the expensive electric heating options, well on board with those views.

We have an old stone house in Ireland which currently have tenants in for the next few years but want to upgrade heating system to suit them but also ourselves when we move back in.

We have an Esse range in the kitchen (no hot water) and a small old Stanley room stove in the living room, hot water from immersion, no rads anywhere. Rural so no mains gas but oil for CH is an option. Don’t fancy that for a number of reasons.

My favoured option is installing a larger multi fuel stove with back boiler for hot water and rads in the living room. The house is very thick limestone walls and seems to need quite a bit of heating in winter but six months of the year, once outside temps are up, almost no heat at all.

My costing’s on smokeless coal from local supplier work out about 4.25c per kw, kiln dried wood quite a lot, but we have room to bulk buy wood and store to season properly which would be the cheapest in the long run, or combination of fuels.

Problem with solid fuel of course is the house not being warm enough in the mornings on the coldest days perhaps, and lack of controlled heat if out all day or away for few days.

I do not like the idea of storage heaters but looking at using some existing oil filled and convectors we have. If we switch to the Nightsaver rate here the night rate is 9.38c per kw and day rate 18.98 per kw (inc vat) with a higher standing charge of course.

It is a fairly small house so about 8kw combined set on timers to fire for one hour before getting up would seem to be able to raise the temps all over the house to comfortable whenever the solid fuel has gone out overnight or not running in milder times. So about 75c per day for that.

Also looking at the LightwaveRF system that plugs into the router and talks to wireless sockets for the heaters, so easy to schedule timing for the heaters, en bloc or device specific. That can also be used remotely with any pc or smartphone, so if out all day and fires out, could always ‘phone’ home and switch heaters on for an hour or so before getting back, so warm when arrive and allows time to start the solid fuel going and warm up.

That of course would be using the higher rate, but only specifically when demanded. We had the bad luck to be on xmas holidays abroad during BOTH the hard winters recently and could do nothing to heat our house and both times came back to frost damage, certainly would not have minded firing electric heaters at any rate remotely to have saved that cost!

Night rate would allow immersion to run cheaper plus if bothered to run dishwasher etc before going to bed savings there too. Not sure yet of all the calculations but looks like this would be a pretty decent setup in our particular case. The solid fuel and rads being the most costly, nothing for the electric heater as we have them already, the LightwaveRF is very cheap (about £69 for the wi-fi unit and 3 plugin sockets £25 – Maplins).

Anyone any experience or thoughts on that plan?

Yabounty · 30 March 2014 at 9:50PM

I have my whole house set up with Rointe heaters. 3x bedrooms 1 in the kitchen, 1 in the hallway and one in the kitchen. If you ask me there bloody brilliant. I've no mains gas but have had calor gas which was a ridiculously expensive way to heat a home. I'm paying £90 a month in electric and the heating is always on as I have 2 young boys and a wife to keep warm and cooking and imersion water cylinder too. Trust me I read all the forums with negative comments but I took a leap of faith and it's worked out well. We had 2 3kw dimplex Cadiz ecos portable heaters and we were burning through about £80 per week with a prepay meter. All I can say is I know there expensive but would defo have them again. I bought mine in the middle of summer and paid £1500 for all plus remote. Prob best time to buy. Hope this helps because I know it's not an easy decision.

Davesnave · 31 March 2014 at 8:45AM

Yabounty wrote: »

Trust me.......I took a leap of faith and it's worked out well..

Sorry, it's nothing personal, but people here have good reasons not to pin their trust on one-time posters.

As for taking leaps of faith, if you stick around, you'll realise that's not what MSE is about. People give up valuable hours of their own time here, attempting to ensure that's exactly what others won't do when they part with their money.

Have a nice day.

penrhyn · 31 March 2014 at 9:18AM

The heaters are most probably well made and have above average heating controls.
The problem as I see it that they are overpriced for what they are, and that some retailers use snake oil techniques to justify the high price attributing magical powers that defy the laws of phsyics.
However from what I can see now they are more widely available the prices are no longer a closely guarded secret so are coming down.

They are not the only things sold this way, take Dysons overblown fan heater which costs £300. Search as you might you'll not find the power rating published.

GrahamHampshire · 2 April 2014 at 8:31AM

I had three Rointe radiators installed in an extension, part conservatory, it took two hours to get from 15 to 20 degrees in the morning. Rointe could not understand it and did a full heat loss assessment. The radiators were supposedly more than capable of heating the rooms, but the warm up period was so slow.

Rointe could not explain why the radiators could not achieve the 20 degree temeprature they claimed was achieveable in a reasonable time.

Rointe refunded the full cost of the radiators, but not any cost of fitting or removing them, I now have Aeroflow radiators which are radiant heat rather than the Rointe mainly convected heat.

The Aeroflow radiators heat up the room much quicker, they maintain the temperature more evenly during the day and are cheaper to run. I have checked the electrcity used with both makes of radiator and Aeroflow use about one third less electricity for a better heating performance.

All though this is my first post it is supported by detailed paperwork and is posted as a warning to try before you buy. I have no connection to either company.

Anyone used Rointe heaters?

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