[TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM] Economy Radiators

tahrey

tahrey wrote: »

I could dissect this at great length, but who knows, maybe I'm having a brainfart and, on some planet in this great galaxy of ours, this is actually legit and a good idea?

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Last edited by MSE Investigator; 11-10-2012 at 4:57 PM. Reason: Pending investigation

tahrey wrote: »

And how long, really, would it take to pay off a £3200 investment? Or even the £1200+ [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM] if I wanted a quote for my 2-bed flat?(

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Last edited by MSE Investigator; 11-10-2012 at 5:02 PM. Reason: Pending investigation

Um, exsqueeze me? What in the holy dickens is this?

OK, a bit of clarity please, "Forum team" / "MSE Investigator".

1/ Why have you summarily deleted stuff out of my posts, and even apparently something out of the topic title?

2/ Do you think it might have been an idea to contact me about this? I have had no PMs or emails regarding this change to what I wrote. I only discovered it - this far after the fact - by searching for my own handle in order to see whether I'd had any replies to an entirely different thread (because for some reason it doesn't track that as an independent feature any more)...

3/ What's this "investigation" that's claimed as the reason for editing in both of the edited posts?

4/ What was the outcome of it, given that it was launched nearly a year ago now?

5/ Will the deleted text ever be restored, or is it gone forever? Because, yknow, I don't keep my own permanent record of everything I write on a forum ever, either on a hard disk or in my head.

6/ Are you actually part of the forum crew, or just someone who's grabbed a convenient username? I mean, I don't see how you could have edited my stuff otherwise, but usually when someone moderates things on a website they do so using an individually identifiable handle (like Moderator:JoeBloggs or the like) so that things can be traced more easily to keep it all above board and reduce accusations of bias or corruption (or at least make them easier to prove).

7/ If it's to do with some kind of legal action, or an independent case concerning the companies mentioned, I don't think this is something you actually need to do. It's not contempt of court journalism; at worst, it's evidence that might actually be useful in any relevant trial. But really, all I did was copy-paste things that company themselves wrote, and asked if there was actually any truth behind it all, because to be honest the whole thing kinda stinks. Or stank. IDK. Haven't gone back to see if their website is still up.

But I do know that trying to sell electric radiators in the UK as a money saving thing vs gas, or trying to sell us on the idea that slightly faster relay switching will in any way save a significant amount of energy vs normal oil-filled ones (particularly when you consider the thing's purchase cost) even if you're not on E7 or E10, is a scam. And let them bring a claim for defamation against that if they like, because I can nuke that argument just with the numbers on my own energy bill and a simple talk on electrical physics.

I await the outcome of your investigation with bated breath. :undecided

tahrey

ThumbRemote wrote: »

Really?

How do you cost that it's cheaper to heat a home using electricity raher than gas?

Presumably using magic, as they're drawing 3.5kW of heat out of 1kW of input power.

Then again, heat pumps are mysterious things. I saw a portable aircon unit being used at work recently that claimed to provide that level of efficiency, so that's presumably what our erstwhile correspondent has in mind.

Quite how it does that, I haven't the foggiest, as it appears to defy the laws of themodynamics. Heat pumps generally either make use of untapped latent heat (such as down in the ground where things don't change as fast as in the air), or have just hit upon a way of shifting it around that's a bit more efficient than producing it from scratch by burning stuff (including burning stuff to turn a compressor and push hot air out into an already warm environment against a heat diffusion gradient).

But whilst that might be a good way of greating 0.99kW of heating or cooling using only 1.00kW of input energy, rather than 0.8kW output from the same amount of input, I can't see how it then translates to 3.5? Maybe it's relating itself to the amount of work that a conventional 3.5kW aircon unit might be able to do? If it could LITERALLY make 3.5kW of cold at one end - and a similar amount of hot at the other - then you'd have the basis of a perpetual motion machine, as I'm pretty certain it's possible to make an electrical generator that could pull more than 1kW of useful generation out of the energy gradient so produced.

Thing is, AC units, especially portable or window-mount ones, are (or at least used to be) notoriously inefficient. Making things cold is a much more complicated and difficult process than heating them up, and you're usually fighting a much more tricky energy gradient (shunting unwanted heat out into an already hot environment, which is directly exposed to a ginormous nuclear furnace aka the sun, vs just introducing some energy into an insulated bubble in a sea of less energetic air).

Put 1kW of electricity through some resistance wire coiled into a heating filament, and you'll probably be granted an increase in the local temperature equivalent to 900w or more. Put 1kW through an oldschool AC unit and you probably won't get 900w equivalent of temperature reduction. And neither will you get 900w of heat coming out of its exhaust pipe. I'd be especially surprised if you got that much heat coming out the exhaust if you shoved the unit and its "cold" side out into the snow, and ran the pipe back into your house. Nor would I be disappointed to find that doing the same with a modern "3.5 from 1" model only produced 800-850w of heat.

So, it's a nice idea, but sadly one born in ignorance of the rest of the facts.

That and not taking account of how, thanks to the UK's messed up tariff and taxation structure, gas is still about 3x cheaper for the same unit amount of raw heat than using electricity, on a regular tariff. So at best you'd only make a fractional saving over just piping in some methane and setting it on fire even IF it was making the full 3.5kW.

(I do wonder, though; the previously discussed PWM method... would the very temperature of the heating wires itself have some kind of bearing on resistance and efficiency? A higher wattage incandescent bulb burns hotter, with higher resistance, and produces a greater ratio of light to heat and is thus considered more efficient as a light source. But heatlamps tend to be in the 20-40w range, where a greater proportion of the output is infrared and such. They make poor lightbulbs, but good heat sources. Now, if you only need 500w to keep a room at a certain temperature, maybe it might make for greater total heat output for the same total electricity input to switch the flow on and off rapidly enough to, say, keep your "2kW" filament at a steady 48~52 celcius, instead of turning it on, allowing it to heat up to several hundred degrees (literally red-hot) for several minutes, and then turning off to cool back down to ambient temperature before starting all over again? Similar to introducing a dimmer in the circuit, but without the parasitic losses it would itself introduce. This is the only way I can think of that would make the fancy radiators more efficient... and it's pure conjecture, plus it wouldn't have the greatest effect overall - the amount of visible light being emitted would still be relatively minor vs the heat output... maybe 5 watts max from a 500w heater...)

tahrey

aliengfx wrote: »

We bought 6 of the £300 economy radiators...

Oh dear. I do hope my post didn't act as some kind of bizarre advertisement for these clowns. Maybe what was deleted was a link to their website, just to make certain it doesn't happen again?

The cheapest way to heat your house is with air con units that work in reverse to heat as well, £400 for a Toshiba 3.5KW unit (1KW input).

/r/ proof, plx :T

That and an electrical pulse motor that produces over-unity power.

WestonDave

Air source heat pumps (or reverse air conditioners) are often more than 100% efficient depending on set up and circumstances.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_source_heat_pumps

That's because unlike an electric heater which gives you 1kw of heat for 1kw of electricity via a heat element, an ASHP doesn't actually heat the air but uses pressurised fluids to extract heat from outside air. Its what your fridge does - it removes heat from the inside to pressurised fluids/gases and transports it via a pump to the black grid you see on the back which releases the heat into the room. That being the case a 1kw pump/compressor can get more than 1kw of heat out of the air. When you run an air conditioning unit what its actually doing is collecting heat from inside the room and taking it to outdoors, so if you run it in reverse you can extract heat from outside air and bring it in. I'm not particularly expert on them but apparently they work even with below zero temperatures outdoors although at the point they generally need a de-icing cycle which wastes some energy. In effect you are running a fridge trying to cool the world down and as the world is so big you can nick a lot of heat from it to bring indoors without making any outdoor difference.

GSHP (Ground Source) or WSHP (Water source) work similarly except the input comes from underground or underwater (say a lake or a passing stream).

They do appear to defy the laws of physics but that's because people try to think of them as conventional heat elements rather than understanding how a fridge works and reversing that.

However with gas at 4p (roughly) per kWh and electricity at nearly 15p per kWh you'd need your ASHP to be 400% efficient for it to be cheaper than gas. That's just about possible (you'd need to look for something called the COP and a COP of over 4) but unlikely in most situations - if you have calor gas or oil because you are off grid then its certainly worth looking at.

Coopdivi

tahrey wrote: »

Um, exsqueeze me? What in the holy dickens is this?
[Truncated Quote]

3/ What's this "investigation" that's claimed as the reason for editing in both of the edited posts?

4/ What was the outcome of it, given that it was launched nearly a year ago now?

5/ Will the deleted text ever be restored, or is it gone forever? Because, yknow, I don't keep my own permanent record of everything I write on a forum ever, either on a hard disk or in my head.

Obviously Economy Radiators have set the lawyers on Money Saving Expert and, as usual, MSE have caved in.

You'll never hear the results of this investigation because there hasn't been one. MSE put that because they like to give the impression that they're the Consumers' Champion and they won't be bullied by a bunch of ...... with big pockets and no scruples.

I'm afraid to say your deleted text has gone off to the laptop ink graveyard. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if some of your recent posts and possibly this one do a disappearing act.

Still. Don't take it to heart. Lots of dodgy I mean completely honourable websites have done exactly the same thing as Economy Radiators. Look at this rouges (sic) gallery for starters:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1602601

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3567595

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1328219