Looking for a heated towel-rail/radiator for new shower room, and I find some are chrome and some are 'chrome effect' (and cheaper). How do they differ, or put another way, what is 'chrome effect', and which is to be preferred?
IME Chrome seems as durable as Chrome ever is, and 'Chrome Effect' peels off after a bit. It looks like a metallised plastic layer on top of a steel base, and peels off possibly due to damp penetration or poor preparation.
Avoid
Chris K
"Chrome effect" usually means aluminised plastic, not metal (plating or base) at all.
These days though, it could be machined out of solid Stellite and the label is just a bad translation.
Thank you both. Something along the lines of 'metallised plastic' was what I feared. Proper chrome it'll be!
Polished titanium..oh bugger. That's about he worst conductivity of any metal there is....
Chrome over chrome effect.
Note that polished stainless is another option...
I'd guess that 'chrome effect' is a bit like 'chocolate flavoured'
ITYM chocolate flavour. Flavoured means there has to be chocolate in the product. Flavour simply means that most people think that is what it tastes like.
Colin Bignell
Most? Remember the row about "hedgehog flavour crisps"?
Andy
Cor - that's twice someone's mentioned them today.
Most as in I often have trouble recognising the flavour claimed but other people can taste it.
Or hedgehog flavoured crisps as they were first described.
Colin Bignell
My son and I both have identical 'ladder' towel radiators in our respective bathrooms (same manufacturer). Mine is chrome - his is painted white.
You can feel the radiated heat from the painted radiator from a foot away. There is virtually no radiated heat from my chrome radiator - although the convected heat seems to keep the bathroom warm enough.
Simple physics ...
The chrome will relect the maximum amount of heat back into the radiator.
Matt black radiates the most heat energy.
At shool we did an experiment with a biscuit tin full of water, over a bunsen burner. Opposite sides of the tin were painted white and black and thermometers were fixed at equal height and distance from the white and black surfaces.
I can't remember the difference in temperature rise but it was substantial.
Off course, when I went to school, radiators were always matt black!
In your case, the white rad is closer to black than chrome ...
Paint his black and you'll really notice the difference!
Sure, but is a towel rail meant to be a radiator? Your towels dry by
*conduction* from the hot rails to the towels that are touching them.Agreed that a radiator should be at least painted white (which works quite well).
I remember biscuit manufacturers going on about biscuits with a "chocolately coating" many years ago when they were using choc- substitute instead of real chocolate. Thankfully, most of them realised the error of their ways and reverted to the real thing - cue a rash of "coated in real milk chocolate" adverts...
-- Halmyre
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