Fischer Storage Heaters

Perusing my elderly mother's copy of the Daily Express, I always secretly e njoy the adverts towards the back. Most of the stuff is simply ridiculous, but some of them are clearly intended to take advantage of older people who may not really understand things very well. Today I saw an advert for Fisc her Storage Heaters. They're not referred to as storage heaters in the adve rt, which is full of vague allusions to how cheap they will be to run. But a little bit of research revealn that this is what they are, and that they cost around £1,000 per heater!

Google throws up a thread on MSE about them which has been heavily censored , clearly because of material which Fischer did not want to be in the publi c domain. The thread also contains many suspicious posts from people claimi ng to be satisfied customers whose only posts are to that thread, and who a ll repeat the same strange conception of physics, electricity, and thermody namics which Fischer itself has.

There is also an even more suspicious thread on something called trustpilot .

I thought this group might take advantage of the uncensored nature of Usene t to assess the honesty and value for money offered by Fischer ...

Reply to
Martin Pentreath
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PS The MSE thread:

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Reply to
Martin Pentreath

Funny, I was reading an advert for such / similar things sent to my elderly Mum recently and I think it's disgusting people prey on others so.

Isn't it the 'First law of thermodynamics' that disprove any claims of magic suggested by most of these systems?

I tried to explain to Mum that if a heater 'stays hot longer than a conventional heater' it simply suggests it isn't giving off it's heat as quickly or it took longer to get to the same temperature in the first place (etc).

Storage heaters take advantage of this by charging when electricity is cheap and releasing the heat when it isn't.

I would have though for the best thermostatic temperature control you want a heater with the least thermal capacity but the highest efficiency output?

Cheers, T i m

Reply to
T i m

It is not just the Daily Express, there some magazines aimed at older readers which by looking at the contents of the one my Mother tried for a while are a sort of " Womans Realms " for the older woman whose life has progressed from push chairs to stair lifts. They usually carry adverts for these storage heaters from various German suppliers with the implication that it some wonderful new technology that the Germans are good at. It is a commercial magazine so is bound to accept adverts that are not actually misleading, worse though I have seen the same adverts in those free news sheets that some councils post out to tell you what they are spending money on or how many potholes they have fixed. That I think is morally wrong as the adverts are clearly aimed at getting money out of elderly people by bamboozle them with bullshit when the same news sheet on another page is warning the same target audience to beware of scams.

Last year at a county show there was a sales man drumming up bushiness for one of the brands and I asked him front of some of his targets how his product could be more efficient than available at screwfix for a couple of hundred per heater and he told me " ours has a better thermostat , it's more accurate". In what way? I asked. Ours don't let the temperature rise above the setting and switch off more often and that's how they make the savings. Ok ,so you have a thermostat whose hysteresis is narrow and switches frequently , how come that costs a couple of hundred pounds. I think he was fed up with me then and turned away,to be fair to the Germans that was from a UK manufacturer who has copied what they describe as Baked Kiln Clay ( That's a brick isn't it) techonology from the Germans and also say that some of the German firms have now reduced quality to cut costs. Sods all of them.

G.Harman

Reply to
damduck-egg

That thread is too long for me to read in detail but I did spot a link to this Advertising Standards Authority ruling:

Another thing which caught my eye was on Fischer-Future's home page which contains the relevant finanical regulations they are required to abide by. It seems financing is a relatively large part of their business and doesn't feel like a good sign.

Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Fischer-Future Heat UK Limited, The Waterfront, 19-20 North Mills, Leicester, LE3 5DH act as a credit broker and only offers products from Barclays Partner Finance. Barclays Partner Finance is a trading name of Clydesdale Financial Services Limited a wholly owned subsidiary of Barclays Bank PLC. Clydesdale Financial Services Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (Financial Services Register Number: 311753). Registered in England. Registered No. 2901725. Registered Office: 1 Churchill Place, London, E14 5HP.

Reply to
pamela

German technology? I had cause to query the meaning of that phrase recently. Last summer I bought an electronic floor standing cooling fan by Klarstein which I thought was the result of "German technology" particularly as it was being shipped from Germany.

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When the fan arrived the instructions were quite obviously written in Ching-lish (perhaps jap-lish or Kor-lish) but not German-English.

The controls were fiddly & fussy using small buttons in the style of Asian design rather than the functional austere buttons which Germans seem to prefer. The ergonomics were truly awful which the Germans often tend to get right. Sure, the fan was all in black but that doesn't exactly prove it's German.

I queried the alleged German provenance of the fan and was told that it was "designed in German but manufactured in China".

Well, I can easily believe it was manufactured in China but (unless they had a team of Chinamen designing for them based in Germany) I tend to think the design was done in China.

Klarstein seems to be little more than a distributor for Chinese goods.

Reply to
pamela

Why do they use such flowery language in their judgements rather than just saying that the adverts are a load of BS?

Reply to
Roger Mills

I have not had the chance to call in to see my parents today and peruse their copy of the DE. Did you manage to have a look at the front page of your mother's copy and can you tell me how Di and Maddie are doing?

Reply to
ARW

Bit like the (compulsory) EPC I had done on Friday - which said that I (that is my buyer) can save £129 over three years by spending £800 - £1200 on 'High Heat Retention Storage Heaters'. Perhaps it would be more efficent to turn them off or wrap them in a duvet. Still never mind it only cost me £96 to be told that!!

Peter

Reply to
Peter Andrews

I have storage heaters, but am under no illusions about their efficiency. as has been said they are only efficient when the electricity they use is much cheaper than that used when the heat is actually needed. We are back at needing a system to store electricity efficiently. If that could be done cheaply and compact enough then lumps of hot rock like these would be a thing of the past. I still feel that the cost to buy these heaters is scandal when you look inside and find how crude they are. One would expect at the very least all the hot bricks should be surrounded by space shuttle type thermal tiles, but no, and the heat output adjuster is normally just some metal flaps on the top operated by a knob and a cam. Mine are Belling and the Gov paid for them so I'm not bothered about the rip off cost of purchase, but I'd certainly not fit them if I was paying for them myself. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

Fischer ...

Get cards through the door about similar electric heating systems. Most of which seem to be thermostatic panel heaters and the "savings" are derived from an "apple and pears" comparison. Before: 40 year old conventional barely controlled storeage heaters and E7 tarrif with low insulation levels/draught proofing. After: thermostaic & timer controlled panel heaters cheap normal tarrif and improved insulation/draught proofing.

I agree the economics don't make sense but when a heater fails it's probably worth replacing with a "High Heat Retention" one. They are expensive though but theoretically do improve the comfort level. ie the room isn't stinking hot at 0700/0800 and freezing by 2100.

I've been looking at HHR's one of our heaters isn't working properly (it's only drawing 66% of the power it should be and AFAICT only has a single element...). There is only one maker but they are sold under three brands Dimplex, Creda and Heatstore, gives the impression of "competition". There is lots of marketing puff but real information about how much longer than a conventional storeage heater they stay hot for is very thin on the ground.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Storage heaters are less efficient than other electric heaters because they tend to leak heat when it isn't needed.

However they are cost effective because they use cheaper rate electricity.

If you want to save CO2 rather than cash then storage heaters are probably a bad idea and will get worse as the nukes go offline as base load doesn't really need storage heaters to keep it going.

Reply to
dennis

enjoy the adverts towards the back. Most of the stuff is simply ridiculous , but some of them are clearly intended to take advantage of older people w ho may not really understand things very well. Today I saw an advert for Fi scher Storage Heaters. They're not referred to as storage heaters in the ad vert, which is full of vague allusions to how cheap they will be to run. Bu t a little bit of research revealn that this is what they are, and that the y cost around £1,000 per heater!

ed, clearly because of material which Fischer did not want to be in the pub lic domain. The thread also contains many suspicious posts from people clai ming to be satisfied customers whose only posts are to that thread, and who all repeat the same strange conception of physics, electricity, and thermo dynamics which Fischer itself has.

net to assess the honesty and value for money offered by Fischer ...

All electric heaters are 100% efficient. Period. There are a lot of tossers here who do not understand what efficiency is.

The only channel for making electric storage heaters use less energy is by improved insulation and better control of the heat output.

What can be saved is actually pretty limited, heat that leaks out during un wanted periods is not totally wasted.

Reply to
harry

Obviously including you.

Not all heaters convert the electricity to heat by resistance, for example, some use heat pumps and they are more efficient than those that don't.

and control the heat input by predicting the following days weather and usage. A possible good use for the IoT.

Heat that leaks out when not wanted is wasted, just because it heats the building does not make it useful.

I wonder why no one makes SS insulted vacuum panels for heater insulation?

Reply to
dennis

Dennis there's no bigger tosser than you. Heat pumps are not resistance heaters. They have a Coefficent Of Performance. Efficiency is not very relevant to their operation.

Reply to
harry

The 'government' didn't pay for them. They were paid for by me and other taxpayers, i.e. the people who don't qualify for 'free' anything and also have to fund the full cost of their own heating installation and running costs.

Reply to
Andrew

The government never pays for anything. In fact it charges you commission on having the tax payers pay for it.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I bet there are a few around here that think you are a far bigger one.

They are electric heaters and you quite clearly claimed all electric heaters are the same 100% efficiency (period) which they clearly are not. If you don't understand these things then don't make claims.

Reply to
dennis

That and a bit of common sense. Adverts for "bargain offers" in the back of Sunday newspapers need to be treated with great caution.

It could be done by using a salt based phase change system where the freezing of the supersaturated salt solution clamps the temperature for a longish period of time. Snag is they tend to separate out and/or expand on freezing so damaging their containment. It isn't ideal for domestic use...

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Some varieties of reusable hand warmer exploit this trick.

You can do a bit better with modern insulation tricks to prevent heat escaping when it isn't wanted but basically with electric storage heaters you are buying very overpriced firebricks in an ugly metal box.

This lot (page 6) have some typical solids heat capacities listed:

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It made sense back in the 1960's with the free nuclear electricity we were promised that would be "too cheap to meter" as night baseload.

Electric fan heater comes closest to that ideal of warming just the air and fairly quickly too.

But if the object is to exploit night electricity rates you want something with as high a specific heat capacity and good insulation round it and a means to switch convective air flow on and off.

A building can be designed with a core that is a storage heater at the middle - I recall some blocks of flats like that with benefit but the stupid boxes of overpriced firebricks are strictly for suckers.

Reply to
Martin Brown

;-)

Quite. ;-(

What are the ones you can boil in water to turn back into a liquid but when activated (bending an integrated capsule), turn solid again and get hot?

Ahem, the ones we have are actually quite neat. ;-)

Yup, that was what was in my mind, excepting the energy 'lost' in the motor to push the air around (but that does avoid stratification). ;-)

Ours even take that further. They monitor the air temperature and that of the core. They then delay the start of the charge period the longest they can to ensure they have their maximum charge by the end of the cheap rate period (rather than them heating up fully as soon as the E7 switches in then having to top up during the test of the E7 period).

And some very old buildings were designed with that sort of idea in mind.

Well, in defence of that and considering the simplicity of the design and controls, the ones we have are pretty transparent and efficient.

The slimline case is mounted away from the wall (built in brackets) and then the bricks are pretty well insulated in their inner box. When the stat has them damped shut there is very little convected or radiated heat from them. On the coldest of days (especially when following a similarly cold night) they are still giving off heat that evening (to a point where we have never felt cold).

We have left them on 365 and they only come into play when they need to (so stone cold all summer etc).

I did replace the smallest one in our daughters bedroom with the smallest balanced flue wall mounted gas fire I could find and whilst that's not the fastest heater in the world it does get and hold her (North facing, 3 solid 9" external walls) box room pretty warm (too warm for us often, even on I of III). ;-)

Cheers, T i m

Reply to
T i m

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