German electric storage radiators
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They are 100% efficient!
What do you think happens to the energy used for the light and sound?
Put a World War Two 1kW searchlight in a room and it will produce as much heat as a 1kW electrical heater of any type.
If you don't agree, read what a guy called Albert Einstein wrote!
Actually, being a pedant, a 1kW searchlight wouldn't dump 1kW into the room unless it had no windows. The light escaping from the windows would carry some of the energy away.
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Thanks cardew, I have got someone coming to look at insulation in a few days, hut tbh not a lot of external wall when u take acount of windows doors and the mid terrace bit lol. My wife will be in most of the day as we have a baby due in the next few weeks. My peak rate charge is less than 1p more than the 24/7 tarrif from my current supplier so will remain on e7 regardless. I guess its more the consideration of how long it will take to recoup the extra cost of storage heaters if ever. Looking at using 1.5kw panels in hall and living room with 0.7 and 0.5 in the bedrooms they could run for approx 7 hours peak and 1 hour off peak (6-7am to take the chill off the morning lol) it would cost about £5 a month more (assumes no peak top up with storage) so that could take years to break even. But then as you say how long is the piece of string I could end up needing the panels on for longer than 7 hours in a day to maintain room temp :-(0
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Actually, being a pedant, a 1kW searchlight wouldn't dump 1kW into the room unless it had no windows. The light escaping from the windows would carry some of the energy away.
Being equally pedantic you cannot dump kW into a room(kW is a term for power) but as I carefully stated:Put a World War Two 1kW searchlight in a room and it will produce as much heat as a 1kW electrical heater of any type.
Left on for an hour both devices would use 1kWh and produce the same amount of heat.
Clearly some of that heat, from either source, would escape through windows, walls floor etc.
I was not advocating using a searchlight as a replacement for a heater;), merely agreeing with A Einstein about energy.0 -
3dollarbill wrote: »Thanks cardew, I have got someone coming to look at insulation in a few days, hut tbh not a lot of external wall when u take acount of windows doors and the mid terrace bit lol. My wife will be in most of the day as we have a baby due in the next few weeks. My peak rate charge is less than 1p more than the 24/7 tarrif from my current supplier so will remain on e7 regardless. I guess its more the consideration of how long it will take to recoup the extra cost of storage heaters if ever. Looking at using 1.5kw panels in hall and living room with 0.7 and 0.5 in the bedrooms they could run for approx 7 hours peak and 1 hour off peak (6-7am to take the chill off the morning lol) it would cost about £5 a month more (assumes no peak top up with storage) so that could take years to break even. But then as you say how long is the piece of string I could end up needing the panels on for longer than 7 hours in a day to maintain room temp :-(
You have summed up the situation well and there is not much more to add.
You could run a trial in the bedrooms with a couple of £20 oil filled radiators from Argos etc with a plug-in power meter(they only cost a few pounds) and see the results before buying the more expensive panel heaters.0 -
Most people here are arguing about the wrong thing entirely. The point is the power used to maintain a given temperature not to achieve it.
All heaters of the same output will require a similar amount of energy to raise the air temperature by one degree centigrade. The critical part is maintaining that one degree rise. Insulation is critical but also heat retention in the radiator i.e storage. If you have no storage then you will lose the higher temperature quickly. If you have storage then you can maintain that temperature using less input power, when the room air has reached the temperature required. Hence you achieve a power reduction in maintaining a given temperature, compared to a heater with no storage. The temperature rise can be 10, 15 or 20 degrees in practise but the rate of cooling is dependant on the insulation and the storage capacity of the heater. Also the higher the temperature required the faster the heat loss, particularly if the outside temperature is much lower than inside the room. QED0 -
Laughed_My_Head_Off wrote: »If you have storage then you can maintain that temperature using less input power
Where does the energy in storage come from?
Oh yes, that's right, you used it at the beginning of the heating cycle, over & above what a "non storage" heater uses.
In other words, you will still use exactly the same amount of energy to maintain the same temperature with ANY type of electric heater.0 -
Laughed_My_Head_Off wrote: »Most people here are arguing about the wrong thing entirely. The point is the power used to maintain a given temperature not to achieve it.
All heaters of the same output will require a similar amount of energy to raise the air temperature by one degree centigrade. The critical part is maintaining that one degree rise. Insulation is critical but also heat retention in the radiator i.e storage. If you have no storage then you will lose the higher temperature quickly. If you have storage then you can maintain that temperature using less input power, when the room air has reached the temperature required. Hence you achieve a power reduction in maintaining a given temperature, compared to a heater with no storage. The temperature rise can be 10, 15 or 20 degrees in practise but the rate of cooling is dependant on the insulation and the storage capacity of the heater. Also the higher the temperature required the faster the heat loss, particularly if the outside temperature is much lower than inside the room. QED
Welcome to the forum; how nice to see yet another first time poster contributing to a thread on electrical heaters.
QED is defined as:An abbreviation of the Latin phrase "quod erat demonstrandum". It literally translates as "which was to be demonstrated", and is a formal way of ending a mathematical, logical or physical proof.
It's purpose is to alert the reader that the immediately previous statement, which naturally was arrived at by an unbroken chain of logic, was the original statement that we were trying to prove.
Unfortunately your post fails the test of logic.
Firstly this statement is not correct:All heaters of the same output will require a similar amount of energy to raise the air temperature by one degree centigrade.
A 1kW fan heater might take, say, 0.1kWh to raise the air temperature one degree.
Although producing the same amount of heat. A 1kW heater in a large tank full of oil/clay/water using 0.1kWh will not raise to air temperature by one degree as most of the energy will be to warm the said oil/clay/water!
Of course that 'large tank' could be a radiator.
Secondly:the rate of cooling is dependant on the insulation and the storage capacity of the heater
Undoubtedly true, but you have neglected to point out that it initially takes power to fill the storage capacity of the heater.
If your(flawed) argument was to hold true, the larger or denser the storage capacity of the heater, the more efficient the heater. So a radiator holding, say, 10 litres of oil would be more efficient than one holding, say 5 litres.
A heater converts electrical energy to heat - which can be measured in BTu, calories etc. All heaters produce EXACTLY the same amount of heat for the same consumption(and hence cost) of electricity.
Even if your flawed argument was correct, that still doesn't alter the fact that a £20 oil filled radiator from Argos will produce Exactly the same amount of heat(for the same running cost) as some of these heaters costing £1,000 or more.0 -
somesenseforyou wrote: »So, I have been reading through this thread and I am slightly worried by how many electricians or people claiming to have knowledge in this field are giving 'advice' and distributing scientific facts to prove...nothing at all.
I am not an electrician but this is pure common sense...
Now...something I have seen quoted here, which is true, is that all electrical appliances are 100% efficient. Well, yes. And? I KNOW that if I plug a 2kw steam iron into my living room it will be just as efficient at (in it's own way) pumping that kw out as heat as a 2kw electric radiator would be.
There is no way on this earth I would ever try and heat my living room with a steam iron...and do you know why? Because I wouldn't be warm..and why wouldn't I be warm? Because a steam iron is not designed to heat a living room. ONE of the reasons is that it has a tiny surface area which is not effective at distributing heat (we are talking about effectiveness here and not efficiency). I wouldn't like to pay for the electricity that my steam iron is consuming because it is not doing what I had plugged it in to do. This is why I wouldn't like to pay for a rubbish electric heater with a tiny surface area that is made of terrible quality materials BECAUSE IT IS NOT DOING WHAT I HAD PLUGGED IT IN TO DO.
Call me mad, but I would prefer to buy a radiator that is made of good quality materials, SPECIFICALLY designed by engineers who have done years of research, to distribute heat effectively (through the materials used, a large surface area, fluting to move air round the room and stop cold spots) that I KNOW will perform not only EFFICIENTLY but EFFECTIVELY.
If your radiator TURNS OFF when your room reaches the temperature you set (I assume that is what these tests originally quoted work from) then the radiator will STOP downloading electricity as its task is complete. Unlike another electrical device/radiator which is still trying to get the room to the target temperature (because it is less effective although it is still operating on the same kw)
This is why there is a difference between electric products. I don't have to even use a steam iron example. What's the difference between Vacuum cleaners, toasters, hair dryers... it's all in the DESIGN. Have you ever read WHICH magazine? Just because a product uses the same kw as another product does NOT mean it performs the same.
After all, as people seem so keen to explain, a poorly thought out, cheap product will use just as much electricity as a well thought out product however, I WILL BE WARM and cosy. You guys, with your steam irons or your cheap Chinese electric heaters, will probably be cold. Your choice though!
That's all very well but I want Scottish electric storage radiators.
Can you help?0 -
somesenseforyou wrote: »So, I have been reading through this thread and I am slightly worried by how many electricians or people claiming to have knowledge in this field are giving 'advice' and distributing scientific facts to prove...nothing at all.
I am not an electrician but this is pure common sense...
Now...something I have seen quoted here, which is true, is that all electrical appliances are 100% efficient. Well, yes. And? I KNOW that if I plug a 2kw steam iron into my living room it will be just as efficient at (in it's own way) pumping that kw out as heat as a 2kw electric radiator would be.
There is no way on this earth I would ever try and heat my living room with a steam iron...and do you know why? Because I wouldn't be warm..and why wouldn't I be warm? Because a steam iron is not designed to heat a living room. ONE of the reasons is that it has a tiny surface area which is not effective at distributing heat (we are talking about effectiveness here and not efficiency). I wouldn't like to pay for the electricity that my steam iron is consuming because it is not doing what I had plugged it in to do. This is why I wouldn't like to pay for a rubbish electric heater with a tiny surface area that is made of terrible quality materials BECAUSE IT IS NOT DOING WHAT I HAD PLUGGED IT IN TO DO.
Call me mad, but I would prefer to buy a radiator that is made of good quality materials, SPECIFICALLY designed by engineers who have done years of research, to distribute heat effectively (through the materials used, a large surface area, fluting to move air round the room and stop cold spots) that I KNOW will perform not only EFFICIENTLY but EFFECTIVELY.
If your radiator TURNS OFF when your room reaches the temperature you set (I assume that is what these tests originally quoted work from) then the radiator will STOP downloading electricity as its task is complete. Unlike another electrical device/radiator which is still trying to get the room to the target temperature (because it is less effective although it is still operating on the same kw)
This is why there is a difference between electric products. I don't have to even use a steam iron example. What's the difference between Vacuum cleaners, toasters, hair dryers... it's all in the DESIGN. Have you ever read WHICH magazine? Just because a product uses the same kw as another product does NOT mean it performs the same.
After all, as people seem so keen to explain, a poorly thought out, cheap product will use just as much electricity as a well thought out product however, I WILL BE WARM and cosy. You guys, with your steam irons or your cheap Chinese electric heaters, will probably be cold. Your choice though!
Welcome to the forum; how nice to see yet another first time poster contributing to a thread on electrical heaters.(we should make this a greeting a sticky')
Firstly the steam iron analogy. It wasn't any of the posters, who have no vested interest, who raised steam irons.
If you care to read back, it was another [STRIKE]salesman [/STRIKE]first time poster.
Nobody has suggested that a steam iron would be in any way acceptable as a room heater. As you so perceptively pointed out with a tiny surface area it is not designed for that task. Also the thermostat works on the temperature of the plate and not the air temperature.
What is inescapable however is that several steam heaters in a room consuming, say, 1kWh would give out exactly the same amount of heat as any other heater, including the heaters that you presumably have an interest in selling. Also despite you 'not wanting to pay for the electricity the steam iron is consuming' it wouldn't cost any more than 'your' radiators - for the same amount of heat.
Similarly a cheap Chinese heater from Argos costing £20 or so will produce EXACTLTY the same amount of heat for the same running cost as 'your' heaters. As said many times, it doesn't matter what the radiators are made from, or what material is inside the radiator - the above applies.
We have many reports on MSE of 'special' radiators costing many hundreds of pounds each, iirc the highest price for a single radiator was £1,800. Care to say how much your radiators market for?
P.S. How astute to mention WHICH in your post - have they reported on your product? How about a mention of the Advertising Standards Authority? Have they also reported on your product?0 -
Steam irons do produce some heat though.
When my daughter uses her steam iron in the room where the thermostat is situated the temperature rise caused by her increased body heat because of the hard work doing the ironing, according to her, causes the room temperature to rise switching off the thermostat therefor the heating.
This means that the rest of the house gets no heating while she irons.
She then uses this as an excuse not to do any ironing as her children upstairs complain that the heating is not on and they are getting cold.Getting forgetful, if you think I've asked this before I probably have. :rotfl:0
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