Anyone used Rointe heaters?

QrizB

simonlangford said:

People who rent the cottage don't want to faff about turning them up and down manually, they just want the house to be at a stable comfortable temperature.  Night storage doesn't do that.

30-year-old storage heaters won't do that, granted, but today's will. Dimplex Quantum (or similar) can be programmed to do exactly that. They will choose their heat input to match likely demand and have a top-up heater in case the logic guessed wrong.

However if you're not too bothered about the running cost (and for a beachside rental that might be the case) there are much simpler panel heaters than Rointe that can do the same. Something like these are a fraction of the price of a storage heater, are almost fit-and-forget and can be programmed to be warm in the daytime and cooler at night.

YellowCarBlueCar

Does Rointe provide the wi-fi control that you're looking for?

As an alternative, you could still use cheap panel heaters plus smart controls such as:
https://heatmisershop.co.uk/electric-heater-wireless-thermostat-bundle-neoair-16a-bundle-v2/

You'd need one thermostat per zone (which could be the whole property), one RF switch per heater, and one hub to link the thermostats to your router for remote access.

I don't have any experience of this application, but do use a Heatmiser Neo to control the oil-fired central heating in a holiday let, and find it works well for me (primarily to set to frost protection when unoccupied, but pre-heat so it's cosy for guests' arrival), and for guests to control when in the cottage.

k98j

This has been an amazing thread to read, thank you to all the electric engineer people that are explaining electric heating. We have Rointe in 3 of our self-catering and I have had doubts about their 'efficiency'. Would you believe I almost considered upgrading them from Kyros to the WiFi D Series as I thought they will at least give me control to shut them down when guests are out or leave the window open. Then more alarm bells:

They don't detect open windows, in my rudimentary experiments. I made sure room was up to heat 18d, opened window, went back after half an hour (it wouldn't have been any more than 7d outside) and the function didn't work. Nor was it working after an hour of having the window open. I tried this more than once in more than one room. I thought it must be the way I'm setting it but there's only one option, on or off, and after reading their trustpilot reviews I'm sceptical it works for anyone.  If anyone out there has tried it and it's worked for them I'd be interested to know. 

Energy efficiency - one of our radiators is smaller than spec'd, due to available wall space. I asked if as long as the 'energy efficiency' green, amber, red remains at green am I safe to assume the radiator is working well. The adviser said yes. So I asked the same question in different ways several times to make sure and yes, I was assured as long as I wasn't seeing amber or red I could rest assured the radiator was working at an efficient level. I called another day and asked the same question to a different advisor. Answer was no. You have to wait for the squiggle to go and the FZL show. Well, I rarely see the FZL (fuzzy logic) on any of the radiators. I do see no squiggle (and no FZL) after a while of being on and if I go up and down the temp range the FZL will occasionally pop up but on different temps within the same spurt of testing up and down the temp range. I've no idea what this means. 

User modes - they advertise as great for hotels etc as the user can set within temp changes on a timer. So can give guests the option for selecting higher range of temps at night and then a range of background heat during day etc. WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH!!!! What they don't advertise is you can't stop the user from simply pressing the manual button and doing what they want. Sure, you can lock the screen, but then the user can't adjust within the parameters, so you may as well just set the temps and lock it, User Mode has absolutely no benefit to business case users whatsoever. That particular sales line to hospitality is a complete and utter con. 

Two of the bathroom radiators are scolding to the touch, even when on anti frost mode.  I think their thermostats are bust....

I'm trying to figure out where to go from here and am considering:

- replacing the radiators (I'll investigate the towel radiators more) but there's no point in replacing them with other radiators that do the same job?
- Trying to identify a WiFi controller that can hide behind wall socket with a thermostat so can manually switch off remotely if needed (guests are away or can see windows are wide open - this is our biggest cause of emotional weeping when we see this)
- Installing WiFi sensors on the windows will alert us if the windows are open. 
- Installing some kind of gadget to monitor consumption as I think our usage is very high but I'd like to be able to see what they are actually using.
- Wattage per room. What happens generally if you 'under spec' a radiator, does it just take longer than desired to heat up? It can't use more power as it can only put out the max power and no more? Or if the thermostat controls it from putting out more heat is it more efficient to have a radiator spec'd at higher W for room than a lower W? (sorry for my lack of tech understanding!)

Any ideas on the above are very welcome and thanks again for all the previous info that has been very helpful.

k98j

Oh and just for others considering Rointe - if you google them I found it interesting that there is very little online if you search just 'Rointe' and their website has 'feefo' with a great rating attached. You have to search 'Rointe forum' (how I found this thread) or go to trust pilot and search them there - it's a very different story....

k98j

FYI for others considering Rointe - this is an interesting study by a housing association in 2019

2 properties had enough energy consumption data available to compare costs pre and post install. Both properties experienced an increase in their annual costs. 1 property that utilised the Fischer heating system (T-06) experienced an increase of 24% whilst 1 property that had the Rointe system installed (T-18) experienced a 29% increase in electricity costs.

oh apparently I've not been on the forum long enough to share links You can search on google for 'Technical Evaluation Report - National Energy Action Rointe' and it's second on the search results

QrizB

@k98j Here's the report (please let me know if you were referring to a different one):
https://www.nea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/CP1022-TIF-report-FINAL-Mar-2019.pdf

Robin9

k98j said:

FYI for others considering Rointe - this is an interesting study by a housing association in 2019

2 properties had enough energy consumption data available to compare costs pre and post install. Both properties experienced an increase in their annual costs. 1 property that utilised the Fischer heating system (T-06) experienced an increase of 24% whilst 1 property that had the Rointe system installed (T-18) experienced a 29% increase in electricity costs.

oh apparently I've not been on the forum long enough to share links You can search on google for 'Technical Evaluation Report - National Energy Action Rointe' and it's second on the search results

No surprises there then

gemini4378

Hello, I've tried to catch up on this thread as much as possible as we're looking at buying a house with Rointe Kyros electric heaters. It's rural so no gas and would really prefer not to use oil as we're on that at the moment and I don't like it. So I'm happy it's electric however not happy to see so many reports of bills doubling! The property is EPC D and one side of the house is mostly floor to ceiling windows. There is a wood burner though. Anyone found a way to make it work? Don't want to not buy the house just because of the heating.

My question is, if we bought the property what would our options be in order to not pay a fortune on bills? Would underfloor electric heating be more efficient? Our old 16th century house had storage heaters and it was seriously cold and expensive but maybe technology has moved on? We have also considered an air source heat pump but I've heard they're quite noisy?

I'd welcome any advice.

Thank you

Beccy

Swipe

gemini4378 said:

Hello, I've tried to catch up on this thread as much as possible as we're looking at buying a house with Rointe Kyros electric heaters. It's rural so no gas and would really prefer not to use oil as we're on that at the moment and I don't like it. So I'm happy it's electric however not happy to see so many reports of bills doubling! The property is EPC D and one side of the house is mostly floor to ceiling windows. There is a wood burner though. Anyone found a way to make it work? Don't want to not buy the house just because of the heating.

My question is, if we bought the property what would our options be in order to not pay a fortune on bills? Would underfloor electric heating be more efficient? Our old 16th century house had storage heaters and it was seriously cold and expensive but maybe technology has moved on? We have also considered an air source heat pump but I've heard they're quite noisy?

I'd welcome any advice.

Thank you

Beccy

If you don't want oil or storage heaters I'd run a mile and find somewhere else unless you have £15K+ to install an air source heat pump. On the other hand, £15K might pay for 4 years worth of electric using the Rointe heaters. The other option is to just get by with the stove and use the heaters as a last resort on extremely cold days. 

lohr500

If you plan to stay in the property for many years, then my advice would be to remove the Rointe heaters.
They will cost a fortune to run as they will be using direct peak rate electricity which is currently the most expensive way to heat the house 

Depending on the size and location of the wood burner, it will provide some heat around the house. But unless you have access to free/cheap wood and somewhere dry to store the wood, they are expensive to run. Newly felled timber also takes months to dry out well enough to burn effectively.

Storage heater technology has moved on and I understand the newer models are able to store heat more effectively during the day so you have more heat in the evenings. But they work on the same basic principle of heating up on an Economy 7 or similar tariff overnight. Many of the newer models ideally also need two electrical feeds to them. A permanent live feed to power the controller and built in circulation fan and a secondary feed which is energised during the off peak period to "tell" the heater when to charge up. The secondary feed can be eliminated by using a local timer for each storage heater but this gets messy as you need to keep checking the timers to make sure they haven't drifted from the Economy 7 hours!
From a disruption point of view, depending on the wiring gauge and condition you may well be able to utilise the existing Rointe wiring points to connect Storage heaters, but without the secondary off peak signal wiring you would need to rely on local timers.
A qualified electrician could advise on this. And if the house doesn't already have an old style Economy 7 or smart meter, you would need to get that changed to access the Economy 7 tariffs.

Other options include Heat Pumps (Air to water, Ground to water or Air to air), liquid gas, oil, biomass.

Anything other than air to air heat pump, will need radiators and the supporting pipework installing as I am assuming the house hasn't got any radiators already. So a costly install but then cheaper to run once up and running.

Biomass isn't mainstream and again requires storage space for the pellets and a higher level of maintenance as the ash needs frequent removal (I believe weekly, but I could be wrong). And currently I have read that biomass pellet prices have rocketed.

After looking at Air to water heat pumps last year for our old farmhouse, rightly or wrongly I concluded that they were not cost effective as a replacement for oil. And that was when there was a £12k grant available, as opposed to the £5k grant now.
Partially this was because nearly all the radiators in the house would have needed changing for larger ones to support the lower operating temperatures from the ASHP. But also I was sceptical on the claims that an ASHP would reliably give me 3kW of heat out for every 1kW electricity used. Especially in the depths of winter where I understand ASHP efficiency drops with colder weather outside.

However, with a new installation you could fit the larger radiators from day 1 so the difference in cost of an ASHP install vs oil or LPG would not be as great as retro fitting ASHP into an existing system. The benefit of larger radiators on an oil or lpg fired system is that you can run the boiler at a lower temperature which improves the efficiency through improved condensing.

I know you don't like oil, but if it was me, I would look seriously at oil or LPG, but specifying larger radiators so the system was future proofed for conversion to ASHP in the future. Modern oil boilers an be located on an outside wall of the property, freeing up space inside and keeping any noise out of the house. We did this with our replacement oil boiler last year.

The difficulty is predicting what will happen to electricity and heating oil/lpg costs over the next 5 years + and which heating method will be most cost effective with the movement in prices. 

I know very little about Air to Air heat pumps, but these are similar to split air conditioning units, with one unit typically on the inside of an external wall and another outside. From an installation point of view, perhaps less disruptive than installing pipework and radiators throughout the property. But how many would you need to ensure good heating throughout the house? And I don't think they qualify for the £5k grant. Someone with more knowledge may chip in with more info on them.

To try and put some numbers on running costs : 

Every kWh you use on the Rointe heaters will cost you around £0.34 at the new capped rate.
A heat pump, IF it can provide a real world conversion factor of 3, will cost £0.11 per kWh.
A litre of oil at £0.89 with a boiler efficiency of 94% will cost £0.09 per kWh.
Storage heaters, see below : £0.16 per kWh.
Don't know about LPG or biomass.


The new capped Economy 7 prices seem all over the place depending on supplier and region, but the EDF off peak rate in our region (Yorkshire) is £0.16 if paying through a fixed monthly DD. So in our region storage heaters would cost around £0.16 per kWh, assuming no additional peak rate electricity was used to boost their output during the day. Possibly a little higher as the modern units have an electronic controller and I believe a circulation fan which will use a little electricity.

Not sure if this helps or confuses!!