The company are very good at advertising the positives of these radiators, so I will leave that to them. I will give you a “real world“ experience, which I'm afraid to say is largely negative.
Now, to be fair the company could not have anticipated the extraordinary hike in electricity prices this past year...though any in-depth study of Net Zero, and the lack of cost effectiveness of renewables could easily have predicted this...but electricity price hikes aside, these radiators are NOT as “fuel bill saving“ as the company would like you to believe. You see they have one fatal flaw...the cold!
If the ambient temperature is mild, say 12-14 degrees, then these radiators will quickly heat to 20 degrees, and they will then click off and stop using electricity until the temp drops below that (usually about half an hour later), so let's say you have them on 4 hrs a day, they are probably actively using electricity for about 2 and a half of those hours. However, lets imagine the temperatures outside fall to around zero, (as they quite often have this winter), and hence inside drops in to single figures. Then, they first struggle to get to 20 degrees, and then they are off for about 2 minutes before the room temp drops and they have to kick in again. So you are using a large amount of kilo wattage per hour for the whole four hours. And of course, unlike Storage heaters, they are on at peak electricity charge time the whole time...unless you are a night owl! This makes them totally cost prohibitive, and hence pretty much useless.
I spent over £11,000 having ten of these fitted into my house. In December, when I had each on for about 6 hrs per day (freezing for the rest of it) my electricity bill came out at over £1000...just for that month! Now the company will tell you that is not the most efficient way of using them, and that they are designed to heat the person not the home...hence to use them one room at a time. Now that is fine if you are happy that your entire family huddle in to one room whilst the rest of your house remains like Ice Station Zebra, or that you plan your movements about the house with military precision to match the timings set up on your radiators. I'm not happy with that. And neither are the walls in my 90% freezing cold house. My old gas boiler (in a previous house) used to heat every radiator in the house, all day long, meaning I could move about without having to put on Arctic gear every time I wanted to go to the bathroom.
As a result I have had to compensate by buying a couple of Calor Gas heaters, and having a Log Burner (that I took out) refitted, at a cost of nearly £3000. Hence, in effect, I now have an £11 grand set of fancy radiators that are working as wall hangings!!
Now it might be that my 200 year old, 5 bedroom Lake District house is not really suitable for these radiators, and perhaps I should've done more research, and not fallen for the hype. But perhaps, (and maybe I'm being naive re. sales people) the sales rep might have mentioned this when coming around to measure up?
To be fair to the Company, they did answer a couple of my complaints/enquiries, but all went quickly silent when it became apparent they had no solution to my problem, other than “try to use them as little as possible“. (not a verbatim quote, but a summary of their advice)
So, if you are considering these as your sole source of heat for a reasonable sized, and commonly aged house...DON'T...unless you are willing and able to pay more per month than the average person does for their mortgage. Or at least until Electricity prices come right down...so in about 10 years??
