Anyone used Rointe heaters?

dickllewellyn

Cardew wrote: »

Good advice.

Just a point for readers on size of radiator. With electrical heaters having them larger than required will not increase running costs. For example if a room requires, say, a constant 1.5kW to keep it at a set temperature, then a 3kW heater will cost the same in running costs because it will only operate for 50% of the time.

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Does that mean a 50% rate of non consumption?! :rotfl:

Cardew

dickllewellyn wrote: »

Does that mean a 50% rate of non consumption?! :rotfl:

In their Techno Babble the correct term apparently is:

'50% equivalent ratio of no consumption'

dickllewellyn

Lol :rotfl:

rothers8080

I find it very disturbing that these [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM] men are getting away with this, and they seem to be [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM] councils in to installing these heaters? Christ.

I can only imagine trying to convince some moron from the council that you cannot exceed the efficiency of the £9.99 argos heater while he is waving some nonsensical marketing material from one of these 'magic' radiators in your face.

I hate this sort of thing.

We use heat exchangers (Daikin) in our non-gas home, I installed them myself and we have had them for years now and they are brilliant. It's -3 right now and the house is toasty warm. We do have a B&Q heat exchanger in one room and it is rubbish, that would be my only advice on heat pumps, buy a good brand (Daikin seem to be the best - it isn't defrosting even today).

We have the air to air type and these seem to me to be the most simple and reliable. They are cheap to run, our bill is about the same as our old gas home was, plus in the summer you have the cool air side of things which is a bit of a wonderful luxury on the odd day you need it.

So, if you are thinking of spending £500 of a scam of an electric radiator - don't - look at heat exchangers instead, they really work.

hall5456

With all the different companies out there now, I have looked into them a bit more and with a critical eye, as trained by other forum members, thanks. Here's a new one popped up, I believe, called ecowarmth-sw and claim to be independently tested - ok fine, but I am sure for their price of 3 rads, I could install Gas CH into the cottage; outrageous costs!

jay1181

Swipe wrote: »

Here we go again

salesman your havin a laugh. fan heaters 30 quid out of argos does the same

Swipe

jay1181 wrote: »

salesman your havin a laugh. fan heaters 30 quid out of argos does the same

Think you may have taken my quote out of context

Ben84

The most famous and widely known property of energy is I'm sure that is cannot be created or destroyed. If a kWh of electricity goes in to an appliance a kWh must be released in some form or another. A TV set for example will emit light, sound and some heat, a vacuum cleaner will convert energy in to the movement of particles, sound and heat. Now we might be fooled initially in to thinking energy is gone when it's used to move something like the dust from your carpet, but moving things does not destroy energy, for example placing an item on a table uses energy and this energy is now contained as potential energy within the item though it's displacement from the earth's gravity. Removing the table releases the energy within in by it falling to the floor again. Anyone who has cycled to the top of a hill then let gravity roll them back down again knows this. Sound is another example where people may think energy is gone, after all making sound waves uses energy and then the sound is seemingly gone. Sound is vibration of air molecules and when they hit other materials, such as the walls and furniture in your house the molecules in these vibrate and the sound is now heat, because that is all heat is, molecular vibrations in materials. You won't however be able to heat your house noticeably by playing records, what we consider a loud sound contains a very tiny amount of energy in watts. The heating from this could however be detected with precision lab equipment, so it is accounted for. Energy may also be locked up in solids by forming chemical bonds which may be released again when these bonds are broken, for example sunlight in the Jurassic era was used to form plant molecules by creating chemical bonds, molecules which were later preserved as coal and oil and are now being burnt in power plants to break these bonds which emit their energy as heat that can be turned in to electricity.

Anyway, these examples are some of many, some more abstract and some fairly obvious, but in every single known example energy is simply changing form and there is no net loss or gain in the actual amount of energy. None is made or destroyed. We tend to say an appliance 'consumes' energy, but that's a bad description and really we should consider energy as flowing through the appliance and in to its surroundings.

Now, all the energy going in to an appliance must be emitted in some form. Many household appliances are not however 100% efficient, we regard any undesirable energy conversions as wasted energy. Lightbulbs, whose whole purpose is to make light, also get very hot and waste most of the energy passed through them as we normally want light, not heat when we turn them on. Electric motors in vacuum cleaners and mixers also heat up from friction while spinning and as their purpose is to create movement not heat, this too is considered waste. Electricity flowing through wires and circuits also generates heat because the electrons in the wires collide with the metal atoms' nucleus, which makes them vibrate and the wire as a result gets hotter. Electrical resistance is analogous to friction where many small particles are passing through a matrix (for example a filter) and are colliding with the matrix and generating friction. This is why it's essential to never overload wiring as it has to be of a suitable diameter to allow the quantity of electrons flowing through it to pass without creating too many collisions and getting hot. You'll still notice devices like power transformers and microchips get warm or hot during use, but normally not dangerously so.

What is notable is that in the overwhelming majority of examples, the wasted energy from appliances is being turned in to heat, which leads on to electric heaters. These are one device we actually want to emit heat. The vast majority is emitted as heat from the element which is designed as a material which experience lots of electron collisions when electricity passes through it. A small fraction will also experience electrical resistance in the rest of the appliance's wiring, but this too simply turns in to heat. As the device is a heater, we don't count this as waste. The end result of all this is that all electric heaters turn essentially 100% of the electricity going in to them from the socket in to heat. They aren't emitting anything else like sound, light or moving around. A few like the bar heaters glow, but I'm guessing this accounts for a few watts at most from a multiple kW heater.

So, in summary, no electrical resistance heater can be more than 100% efficient as energy cannot be made. The basic models are also already 100% efficient (or exceptionally close) so there is nowhere to go with making them more efficient. Fancy descriptions of electric resistance heaters that suggest they're more efficient than any other should be considered misleading.

hall5456

Ben84 wrote: »

So, in summary, no electrical resistance heater can be more than 100% efficient as energy cannot be made. The basic models are also already 100% efficient (or exceptionally close) so there is nowhere to go with making them more efficient. Fancy descriptions of electric resistance heaters that suggest they're more efficient than any other should be considered misleading.

But, Didn't the physicists just show you can go faster than the speed of light, therefore breaking one of the laws of physics :eek: Just wait until they move on to testing electric radiators!

Cardew

hall5456 wrote: »

But, Didn't the physicists just show you can go faster than the speed of light, therefore breaking one of the laws of physics :eek: Just wait until they move on to testing electric radiators!

Oh dear, you really shouldn’t have gone there.

I can just see the claim.


'Experiments with our own version of the Hadron Collider, in one of our test rooms, has shown that the Laws of Thermodynamics do not apply to our heaters etc! This is our own opinion.'