Inferred panel heaters

Grahamxxxx

Hello everyone I have just seen an advert Via Seftongreenenergy.co.uk promoting flat panel inferred heaters ,they are not Halogen but claim to use the same inferred as the sun , they are custom made and expensive but claim to produce much more heat for the same money, they can look like mirrors or pictures.
Has anyone any advice and any proper tech knowledge as I am thinking about buying some to replace my gas heating.
Thanks Graham

Cardew

Grahamxxxx wrote: »

Hello everyone I have just seen an advert Via Seftongreenenergy.co.uk promoting flat panel inferred heaters ,they are not Halogen but claim to use the same inferred as the sun , they are custom made and expensive but claim to produce much more heat for the same money, they can look like mirrors or pictures.
Has anyone any advice and any proper tech knowledge as I am thinking about buying some to replace my gas heating.
Thanks Graham

Welcome to the forum.

Firstly, without question they do not deliver any more heat(let alone 'much more heat') for the same running costs than any other form of electrical heating.

All electrical heating is 100% efficient in that it produces exactly the same amount of heat for the same cost - and that applies to your £10 fan heater from Argos or heaters costing £hundreds , sometimes £thousands each.

I had a quick skim through that link you gave and could not see any 'claim' that they 'produce more heat for the same money' Perhaps you can point out and post any such claim. They are not normally silly enough to make the statements you attribute to them as they would fall foul of the Advertising Standards Authority.

Of course like any advertising they try to give the impression they are more efficient, and statements like this are completely accurate:

Redwell infrared heating units are engineered to be energy efficient. They convert 100% of the electric energy used into heat.

However so is a £10 Argos fan heater or £30 oil filled radiator 100% efficient.

The usual blurb of 'it only costs xxp per day to heat a room to yyC' is meaningless.

Depending on the efficiency of your gas boiler, electricity costs between two and three times as much to produce heat as gas CH.

fishybusiness

The panels you refer to are probably Redwell or the cheaper Wellina panels.

Try not to take Cardew too seriously with regard to infrared, I had a debate with him and his cronies earlier in the year about infrared panels, which resorted to them taking the mickey out of me.

Cardew quotes the 100% energy conversion rule as his guiding argument. The debate is not actually about how much heat a given panel can produce. It is more about what is actually heated. Conventional heaters use air as a medium for heat energy transfer, infrared panels do not.

I have two panels, and am considering buying more, I'm waiting for Warmfront to have a look next week, as they may help us in other ways.

So far, I have found the panels do heat rooms at a lower cost than say a convector heater. They heat walls and ceilings rather than the air, and my way of using them is to run them through the night on E7, on a thermostatic timer, which essentially turns the walls in to a giant storage heater. My understanding is that the air is not heated directly, and that does seem to be the case at my house, and the savings come from not heating the air. Also, there are less convection currents around the house, which I have found too.

When they are switched on it does feel like the sun is shining on your skin, which is a bit of an odd sensation in the house.

I have two in my living room, and standard calcs suggest about 1800 W per hour is required to keep it at 20 degrees C, outside temp 0 degrees C, infrared calcs suggest about half of that. I have the panels connected to energy meters, and I have a data logger set up monitoring the temperature. Once we have some really cold weather I'll be able to give some definitive results.

What I will say is that the manufacturers suggest ceiling placement is optimal, that is not practical for us, wall mounting is not quite as efficient (so they say), but that is what we have done. You'll have issues with power sockets, especially if you use them all over your house, although ex storage heater wiring will work really well. They don't look so good with wires dangling across or down walls, a problem we have yet to solve.

Also, bear in mind the panel temperatures, some are too hot for wall use - up to 150 degrees C, some about 100 C, which is ok for the top half of the wall, and some about 65 C, but the lower temp panels are no where near as good - look up Boltzmanns Law for more info on the function of surface temperature.

If you touch a panel at 100 degrees C, you will find you don't get burnt, although I'm sure you would if you left your hand there for a while. It's because there is very little heat energy stored in the panel, and so its surface cools as you touch it.

Before I bought my panels I spoke to 4 companies, to be honest 2 of them were just sales idiots, and couldn't talk to me about the technical side of it, so I dropped them. One company, who I bought from were much more happy to talk and also to supply in small numbers rather than the 'big sell'. I recommend you do a quick Google, most of the UK sellers come up straight away.

They are used much more on the continent, often in modern, well insulated houses, which most of UK houses are not. I'm sure the greatest benefit comes from using in a 'green' home.

Finally, there is a good bit of research out there, some objective, some not so, in the end you have to make your own mind up. You won't find many on this forum that have the relevant experience to comment. I'll get shot to pieces no doubt, but there you have it :)

Cardew

fishybusiness wrote: »

Try not to take Cardew too seriously with regard to infrared, I had a debate with him and his cronies earlier in the year about infrared panels, which resorted to them taking the mickey out of me.


You won't find many on this forum that have the relevant experience to comment. I'll get shot to pieces no doubt, but there you have it :)

Here is the thread where these heaters were debated:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3930517

Apparently I have no right to comment on these heaters, or my 'cronies' - who seem to be everyone else on the thread; all of whom didn't agree with fishybusiness.

fishybusiness

I think you have every right to comment, and you have exercised your right on a couple of occasions.

My point being that your debate is backed up by the 100 percent rule, and should you choose to tell other people these panels are a con, you ought to be able to back up your claims.

To date you have not.

wrightk

on the couple of years i have been a member on this forum, the one thing that strikes me, compared with any other forum around is the childish arguments, particuarly from the more experienced members who are keen to ridicule anyone 'new' or who contradicts anything they say. im not saying that this is or isnt the case in this thread i just thought it needed to be said. i wonder if youd sit in the pub arguing about the efficiency of infrared panel heaters, or ridiculing each other for peoples points of view.

Just because the forum is behind an i.p address, doesnt mean we shouldnt all conduct ourselves as if it was face to face

macman

You'd be completely barking to replace gas heating with any form of electric heating, since, as Cardew correctly pointed out, it is around 3 times more expensive per kWh.
If you really wanted to heat only part of your property, you'd be better off updating the CH controls to create some sort of zone control, or fitting gas fires.
Fitting expensive over-hyped panel heaters is not the solution, they're designed to ensnare people who don't have a mains gas supply.

Cardew

wrightk wrote: »

on the couple of years i have been a member on this forum, the one thing that strikes me, compared with any other forum around is the childish arguments, particuarly from the more experienced members who are keen to ridicule anyone 'new' or who contradicts anything they say. im not saying that this is or isnt the case in this thread i just thought it needed to be said. i wonder if youd sit in the pub arguing about the efficiency of infrared panel heaters, or ridiculing each other for peoples points of view.

Just because the forum is behind an i.p address, doesnt mean we shouldnt all conduct ourselves as if it was face to face

Well I suppose I could be considered one of the more experienced members; and I replied to the OP in post#2.


Yet it was fishybuiness who started his post with the comment:

Try not to take Cardew too seriously with regard to infrared, I had a debate with him and his cronies earlier in the year about infrared panels,

Have you read this thread which is the basis of the discussion?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....php?t=3930517

What justification is there in stating that Cardew and his cronies should not be taken seriously about infrared heating?

Surely the whole purpose of a money saving website is to give readers advice and all my 'cronies' seem to have the same opinion about infrared heaters.

On advantage of being an 'experienced' contributor, is that we see time and again people with vested interests championing products.

Also by 'vested interests' I include people who have bought a product and feel that they must defend their choice. I speak as someone who bought two Betamax VCRs and a Toshiba HD DVD two months before Sony won the battle!

fishybusiness

Surely the whole purpose of a money saving website is to give readers advice and all my 'cronies' seem to have the same opinion about infrared heaters.

Sure, and how many of you have used modern infrared panels, the type that give out no light energy, and are designed as alternatives to other forms of heating?

How many of you have any experience at all of these units?

As far as can tell........none of you.

How many of you have said categorically that these panels are not worth their money and suggest buying at Argos or Aldi.......a good few including yourself.

Have you Cardew told other people not to bother with infrared panels?

I do believe you have.

Where are your credentials in doing so?

You have none.

People come here trying to find answers and solutions to often difficult problems with electric heating, often misunderstanding the use of efficiency with regard to electric heaters. The forum does a great job guiding people away from unscrupulous suppliers, which is an ongoing task it seems.

However, with the case of infrared panels, very few people have experience, and even fewer expertise.

I do not believe you have the credentials to tell people not to buy them, and that is my point.

I came back here to describe my own experience with these panels, both the good and the bad. My 'vested interest' is to feel that others may benefit from my experience, not to champion a cause.

So, let us go there again, let me ask your experience and credentials in being able to define the ability of modern infrared panels to heat a room or home at a lower cost than conventional electric heaters.

daveyjp

Infrared heaters use a different method to generate the heat than say a convector heater, that's why the heat feels different, but they cost no less to run than a £20 heater of equivalent output.

Cardew

fishybusiness wrote: »

I think you have every right to comment, and you have exercised your right on a couple of occasions.

My point being that your debate is backed up by the 100 percent rule, and should you choose to tell other people these panels are a con, you ought to be able to back up your claims.

To date you have not.

You have got this completely the wrong way around, we lesser mortals rely on physics. You are the person challenging the laws of thermodynamics, so you need to back up your claims.

All of the contributors to that thread are of one mind, that infrared heaters, like any other resistive heater, produce no more heat for your buck.*

That is simple physics and the justification for saying that any claim(or implication) that an electrical heater can produce more heat than any other electrical heater is incorrect.

You make this claim:

I have two in my living room, and standard calcs suggest about 1800 W per hour is required to keep it at 20 degrees C,* outside temp 0 degrees C, infrared calcs suggest about half of that.

That means you are claiming a room requiring 1.8kWh to maintain a temperature of 20C when 0C outside can be kept at the same temp using about 0.9kWh.

Now I am saying unequivocally that your claim, is incorrect! So you need to show some proof(not implied statements in advertising bumph) that infrared heaters produce double the heat output for the same input. Or conversely that 20C can be maintained by infrared heaters using half the heat.

Do you not think that WHICH or the Energy Saving Trust, Government etc would be promoting Infrared heater if they produced double the heat output?

P.S.
* To pre-empt anyone bringing up heat pumps as an example of producing more heat. They are not resistive heaters; they are devices to transfer heat from the outside air/ground(which gets a little colder) to the inside of a property.