radiator efficiency

I know, it makes you want to scream.

A fan heater is good for heating a bulk area quickly - within the limits of the heater. Hilarious reading reviews of people trying to heat a "warehouse" with a 2kW heater when even a big propane heater has a job.

An oil filled radiator is good for creating a local hot spot, particularly under an enclosed desk.

An aluminium extrusion radiator is good for mounting solidly on a wall and resisting "traffic damage" whilst looking very attractive in "side view". I needed a backup heater on the stairs, but due to "eyelevel" location everything else was pig ugly. The bottom of the range 700W Calortec F.Prime with various vouchers & offers was =A3120 which was =A335 more than the cost of the extrusions for a plug, thermostat & element. For comparison Elnur is about =A3230 and it goes up from there.

Reply to
js.b1
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Beware. Dennis contains significant quantities of nuts.

He's off his meds again I think. Net Stalking People Who Disagree With Him.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Who is disagreeing with what I have posted other than TNP? Are you? If so what have I said that is incorrect?

Reply to
dennis

He is referring to me telling him he is wrong in a.l.u. Its the only other group I read on a regular basis and he is there spouting cr@p so I told them he is. Now he thinks I am stalking him, he isn't worth it.

Reply to
dennis

Have you ever balanced a CH system or fitted thermostatic valves?

It is quite common to throttle back the hallway radiator when balancing CH.

Reply to
ARWadsworth

Terribly vulgar in fact. Posh people have zone valves..

I'll get my coat..

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I installed my own system, with zone valves to have proper control not some bodge!

That would be pretty stupid to do, you need to do that to the one where the room stat is, if you have a system with cr@p controls. You need to find the coolest room first and that might not be the hallway even if most plumbers assume it is. Then they say well i have fitted a wireless stat so you can move it about, conveniently forgetting they have fitted TRVs on all the other rads.

Of course *if* you balance a system properly you don't need TRVs and fitting them means the owner can easily unbalance your system that you have balanced to the point where the "hall" radiator gets too hot and cuts off the heating to the rest of the house.

Have you ever balanced a system with such cr@ppy controls and got it to work properly? No I didn't think you had, because you can't, as soon as one TRV cuts the flow more water goes through the hall rad making it hotter and cutting the boiler off leaving all the rooms demanding heat they can't get. How do you bodge this? By making the hall even hotter or turning the rad down so its even colder normally and leaves the boiler running. So much for balancing.

Maybe you can fit a constant head pump so the flow doesn't change but I bet you don't know what one is, certainly most plumbers don't fit them to their "balanced" systems.

Do you want a bigger list of what's wrong with most CH systems as installed by plumbers?

Reply to
dennis

While we're swapping off-topic anecdotes, last December in bitter coldness I went to watch Avatatar with the other half at a particularly cavernous Odeon (Holloway Rd if anyone's interested) which must seat about five hundred people. The heating was broken, but never mind, they'd solved it. They had two two-bar electric fires (they must have raided my granny's house) glowing away at the front! Still, if my granny was actually there she would have got up half way through and turned one of the bars off.

Cheers!

Martin

Reply to
Martin Pentreath

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