I fitted a Dimplex Quantum heater!

Casp55

I thought I would post an update for those that already have Quantum heaters or thinking of buying some.

So it has now been 5 working days since I phoned Dimplex and reported the fan problem that I have and still no sign of an engineer. The problem there is that Dimplex like so many other company's these days don't have there own service department. There service and warranty work is housed out to a third party company. I think I will have to give Dimplex another call.

Whilst I have been waiting I thought I would do a little investigating of my own and found what think is a design fault. I am at home all day so have the heater set on "Home all day" If I was working then I would never have found this problem. Last week we had a few very cold days and I found the heater was running out of heat by about 9pm. I went into the menu and selected the 1 hour extra charge option, so that the heater would store more energy the next night. This worked fine and the next evening I had good heat until I went to bed at 11Pm. I was curious what the difference would be if I selected the 2 hour extra charge option, so the next day I gave it a try. This is when I started having the fan problem. The heater did get very hot to touch with the extra 2 hour charge, but the fan would not work until the heater had cooled down sometime in the afternoon. It then worked fine. The next day I set the extra charge back to 1 hour and the fan has been working fine ever since!

My conclusion is that either I have a faulty temperature sensor or more likely it is because the heater gets so hot inside with the extra 2 hour charge that it wont allow the fan to work until the whole unit has cooled down for about 6 hours.

To me this looks like a design fault, but will have to wait and see what the engineer has to say, that's if he ever turns up.

delboy61

what temp did you set the heater at

delboy61

Casp55 wrote: »

I thought I would post an update for those that already have Quantum heaters or thinking of buying some.

So it has now been 5 working days since I phoned Dimplex and reported the fan problem that I have and still no sign of an engineer. The problem there is that Dimplex like so many other company's these days don't have there own service department. There service and warranty work is housed out to a third party company. I think I will have to give Dimplex another call.

Whilst I have been waiting I thought I would do a little investigating of my own and found what think is a design fault. I am at home all day so have the heater set on "Home all day" If I was working then I would never have found this problem. Last week we had a few very cold days and I found the heater was running out of heat by about 9pm. I went into the menu and selected the 1 hour extra charge option, so that the heater would store more energy the next night. This worked fine and the next evening I had good heat until I went to bed at 11Pm. I was curious what the difference would be if I selected the 2 hour extra charge option, so the next day I gave it a try. This is when I started having the fan problem. The heater did get very hot to touch with the extra 2 hour charge, but the fan would not work until the heater had cooled down sometime in the afternoon. It then worked fine. The next day I set the extra charge back to 1 hour and the fan has been working fine ever since!

My conclusion is that either I have a faulty temperature sensor or more likely it is because the heater gets so hot inside with the extra 2 hour charge that it wont allow the fan to work until the whole unit has cooled down for about 6 hours.

To me this looks like a design fault, but will have to wait and see what the engineer has to say, that's if he ever turns up.

what temp did you set the heater at

martinski

I'm thinking of replacing our old lounge storage heater at our holiday let. The existing heaters charge from the E7 via a time switch so there is no power at all during the day to the heaters. Does the quantum (an other storage heater units with a fan for that matter) have a separate cable for the peak rate and fan supply? Also, I believe the cheap rate is from 1.30am to 8.30am at the moment but this varies according to suppliers and daylight saving times. Do you have to manually set what you believe to be the cheap rate times or does it just ...'know'?

JPmagic

the answer to "martinski" is yes the Quantum requires off peak and on peak connections. I believe the controls run off the on peak electric (well that's what i have read in this thread on the first page)

I'm very interested in replacing my 20yr old storage heaters as i too get annoyed off all the stored energy that has 'leaked' out by the time i get home at 5:30pm.

I'm looking into getting the QM150 for the living room, the cheapest i have found it online is £708 plus £10 shipping, where did you guys purchase yours from? If so i wonder if they are cheaper..

I also need to replace one for the hallway/stairs but this one only has an off peak electrical connection. Can anyone recommend a decent Dimplex storage heater to suit this or am i just best of sticking with the 20yr old Dimplex one i have got.

Also another question, has anyone covered these heaters up as lets face it they are not the nicest things to look at especially my old light grey 20yr things i have got. I read that they run a lot hotter than normal radiators so they advise the MDF covers would be a fire risk, but just wondered if anyone has done it?

JPmagic

Also to add i see Dimplex can supply a shelf that site 150mm above the heater, has anyone got these and are they just normal MDF? Just trying to work out if Dimplex are trying to rip me off at £30-40 for a shelf

JPmagic

Casp55 wrote: »

I thought I would post an update for those that already have Quantum heaters or thinking of buying some.

So it has now been 5 working days since I phoned Dimplex and reported the fan problem that I have and still no sign of an engineer. The problem there is that Dimplex like so many other company's these days don't have there own service department. There service and warranty work is housed out to a third party company. I think I will have to give Dimplex another call.

Whilst I have been waiting I thought I would do a little investigating of my own and found what think is a design fault. I am at home all day so have the heater set on "Home all day" If I was working then I would never have found this problem. Last week we had a few very cold days and I found the heater was running out of heat by about 9pm. I went into the menu and selected the 1 hour extra charge option, so that the heater would store more energy the next night. This worked fine and the next evening I had good heat until I went to bed at 11Pm. I was curious what the difference would be if I selected the 2 hour extra charge option, so the next day I gave it a try. This is when I started having the fan problem. The heater did get very hot to touch with the extra 2 hour charge, but the fan would not work until the heater had cooled down sometime in the afternoon. It then worked fine. The next day I set the extra charge back to 1 hour and the fan has been working fine ever since!

My conclusion is that either I have a faulty temperature sensor or more likely it is because the heater gets so hot inside with the extra 2 hour charge that it wont allow the fan to work until the whole unit has cooled down for about 6 hours.

To me this looks like a design fault, but will have to wait and see what the engineer has to say, that's if he ever turns up.

According to Dimplex Website the safety devices installed on the Quantum range is an "electromechanical over temperature thermostat for fan and also an over temperature limit thermostat for fan" (what a mouth full) so the fan is doing what it should be doing, at least you know its not faulty. Maybe the theory behind it is the fan would be pumping out some extreme heat if it turned on first thing having an extra 2hr+ charge making it too hot and uncomfortable in the room for the first couple of hours.

lstar337

JPmagic wrote: »

I also need to replace one for the hallway/stairs but this one only has an off peak electrical connection. Can anyone recommend a decent Dimplex storage heater to suit this or am i just best of sticking with the 20yr old Dimplex one i have got.

No unit other than a Quantum is going to offer you any significant upgrade, so I would stick with what you have as long as it is working.

JPmagic wrote: »

Also another question, has anyone covered these heaters up as lets face it they are not the nicest things to look at especially my old light grey 20yr things i have got. I read that they run a lot hotter than normal radiators so they advise the MDF covers would be a fire risk, but just wondered if anyone has done it?

I wouldn't cover them. Ignoring the fire safety issues, the units need to measure the room temperature in order to determine how much charge to accept. If you cover it the thermostat will trip causing it to take less charge than needed.

If you get some nice heat resistant paint you may be able to make it blend a little more.

JPmagic

Good point! i didn't think about the thermostat getting the wrong reading of the room if i did cover them.

Casp55

Ok, I thought it about time that I posted another update for those who are thinking of purchasing Quantum heaters.

As you may recall I phoned Dimplex with my problem on the 12th of December and was told I would be contacted by a repair agent within 3 working days. Well that turned out to be the 2nd of January. As it happened my heater had been performing ok during my wait, so the repair guy said he would give me a call in a weeks time and see how it was. That turned out to be 2 weeks and when I queried this he said he had no parts for the Quantum heaters anyway! By this time I had installed the second heater that I had bought at the same time as I wanted to see if that had the same problem. When I switched it on last Monday the first thing I found was that the battery back up that stores all the settings in the event of a power failure was not working. Then when it took on charge that night in the morning I found the heater was blowing out air that one could only describe as warm and hardly enough to heat the room. I phoned Dimplex again and this time made my feelings known on how disgusted I was to find the second heater was also faulty. They are sending out there regional engineer to look at both heaters tomorrow, so watch this space.

So at the moment I have one heater that gets so hot that I have to turn it off every other day to allow it to cool down (even the wall it is mounted on gets very hot) And one heater that does not store hardly any heat whatsoever. For £1200 and a name like Dimplex I was expecting a lot better quality and service.

I am at home all day and that is why I thought these heaters would be ideal for my situation, as the first one certainly retained enough heat to keep the place warm until I went to bed at about 11pm. My old Dimplex heaters run out by about 7.pm. I had the first heater set at 23 degrees because I like the place a little warmer than some. I cant comment on the second one because I have not managed to get it working.

I will try and cover some of your questions since I was here last.

I had the heater set at 23 degrees.

No. I would never cover one of these heaters, because I think that would certainly cause an overheating problem. Anyway, I don’t think they look that bad. They certainly look much better than the older type of storage heater.

Yes. They work on a duel power source. Standard 24 hour and Economy7. In theory you just set the timer mode that you want and the temperature and the heater will do everything for you. Does it work? I would like to think it would if only I could get them working correctly in the first place.

Yes. There are about 5 thermal cut out switches inside the heater to prevent overheating. Unfortunately it would appear they don’t work on my first heater. When I say it gets hot I mean it gets HOT! I would certainly not want a young child going anywhere near it when it gets up to full temperature. I know this is wrong because if you read what Dimplex say about the Quantum they say the outer casing is much cooler that the standard storage heaters, because of the very high-tech insulation that they use. While on the subject of young children. The boost feature of the heater has its own element that runs off the 24 hour supply. A very good idea if the heater runs out of stored heat during a very cold spell. BUT!! If you look at a picture of the Quantum heater you will see a long grill that runs along the bottom of the heater. This is not only where the stored heat is pushed out by the fan, but also behind that grill is the boost element and you can see it glowing red hot when in use. It bothers me that very small fingers could poke through that grill as the way that element glows would certainly attract the attention of a small child crawling around on the floor, as the grill would be at eye level with them. Even if they could not get there fingers through the grill, you can certainly poke something like a pencil or spoon through the slots. I find this very disturbing even though I have no young children here.

The cheapest place that I could find the Quantum heater was a place called electricpoint.com. They have the QM150 at the moment for £690 inc VAT. It is also where I bought my two from so I can vouch for there very good service. The one on my landing also only had an off peak connection. I just drilled through the wall above the skirting board and picked up a 24hour feed from adjoining room. No big deal really and much cheaper than getting an electrician in to fit a point on your landing.

Right now I would not want to fit a shelf above my heater, but if I did it would be great for frying an egg. I am not joking either!

I agree with what you say regarding the fan cut out device if the heater has been set to take on 2 hours of extra charge, but from what Dimplex have told me the fan should still operate no matter what the inside temperature is. That is the idea of the Quantum heater. It does not radiate heat like a conventional heater, it blows the stored heat into the room using the fan. If using the option of taking on extra heat causes the thermal cut out to shut the fan down then I see that as a design fault. So why have the storage of extra heat feature if you cant use it!. When I first found this problem I went into the heaters settings and turned the room temperature up to 30 degrees, but still the fan would not come on.

All of this said I still think the Quantum is a pretty good piece of kit and certainly a big step up from the old type of storage heater. Dimplex would have a very good product if only they could iron out these stupid problems. Especially the very dangerous one of the boost element being accessible to very small people.

I will post again once the Dimplex guy has been to look at both heaters. Hopefully that will be tomorrow.