Rointe

[sydney]

Hi nicely,

you seem very clued-up so can I ask if you have any experience or knowledge of Plano radiators from intelligentheat - Radiant Heat Range of Designer Electric Central Heating Radiators

 

[nicelydone]

Hi Sydney,

Sorry, not been on the forum for a while.

What you have to remember is that all electric heating is 100% efficient - all the electrical input is converted to heat, so no electrical heating product can be any more efficient than another. Accurate electronic thermostatic control does help with running costs, but pretty much all the products on the market have this. The only differences in the products are the internals. i.e oil, fireclay, ceramic, element only, steel construction, aluminium construction. The only difference any of this makes is either a slower heat up time and better heat retention ( ceramic, fireclay, steel ) or faster heat up and little heat retention ( element only, dynamic oil, aluminium ). In the end, if you have a 2kw heater/radiator it will give 2kw of heat. If it's retained internally to the radiator, it just means that it's not in the room yet. The largest output in the range you mention seems to be 1.3kw which is only enough for maybe a bedroom, not usually enough for a living room. Hope this is helpful.

 

[BigFergs]

What you have to remember is that all electric heating is 100% efficient - all the electrical input is converted to heat, so no electrical heating product can be any more efficient than another.

Hahaha. That's a classic. Where did you learn that particular gem?

I've installed a fair few of the Rointe K heaters and they are pretty good from our poibnt of view as well as the customer. Reduced electricity bills can't really be argued with. I'm getting more and more enquiries about them, too. It's a good bit of kit, guys.

 

[mayfair]

Was on a Rointe course at CEF in Spain not so long ago they will give you nice energy saving comparison slide rule type of thing plus lots and lots of support, if you ask nice you may even get a nice fleece or jacket. I did

 

[nicelydone]

Hahaha. That's a classic. Where did you learn that particular gem?

I've installed a fair few of the Rointe K heaters and they are pretty good from our poibnt of view as well as the customer. Reduced electricity bills can't really be argued with. I'm getting more and more enquiries about them, too. It's a good bit of kit, guys.

That particular gem can be learned in GCSE physics! It is a fact that electric resistance heating is all 100% efficient. It is basic physics. There is no difference in efficiency in any electric resistance heating product, all the fuel input is converted to heat. Good thermostat and programming controls can help to reduce the running costs of any heating system however by preventing big overshoot and undershoot of a set point therefore preventing unneccesary overheat and re-heat cycle. Most thermostat manufacturers are now using electronic Proportional Integral technology (or PI) which will maintain a room set temperature within +/- 0.2 deg C. Rointe say there 'energy optimiser' ( Electronic PI thermostat ) is accurate to +/- 0.25 deg C so no better than any other electronic PI thermostat. In conclusion, any electric heater with an electronic PI thermostat, of which there are many on the market will do exactly the same as a Rointe heater. I'm not saying Rointe heaters are no good, they are just not an energy saving product and have exactly the same efficiency of any electric resistance heater.

 

[BigFergs]

Deary me. It's clearly GCSE - and not above. I'm not going to get into a ****ing competition with you about Physics, because I reckon I would win, given my training. All your electrical energy is converted to heat - that could be argued by a GCSE physics teacher or even a decent student of said, but let's say your premise is correct for argument's sake.
What are you trying to heat? Stones (storage heaters) or air (panel) or thermal oil (Rointe) - or....let's look at this from the end users' point of view...a room. I can heat stones and they can radiate heat and cool down in the process - surely no-one is arguing that (in terms of heating a space) storage heaters do an efficient job of heating a room which requires daytime use. I can heat air directly from a resistor - again, panel heaters cannot seriously be argued as being efficient at heating anything other than the body of the heater and the air which passes momentarily over the surface of the resistor.
Then, I can heat oil encased in aluminium which stores that heat and transfers it (therein lies the key) to air which passes by whilst maintaining its heat relatively well - the temp of said machine being maintained by the thermostat.
Yes, manufacturers are moving towards triac thermostats - OF COURSE they are. The more modern panel heaters may use them, but - for a start - the controllability is limited (tend not to be digitally controllable), so you are saying "make it hottish" and "make it less hottish" as opposed to make it 19 or 20 degrees in the room, or whatever. The circuitry involved also has a quality aspect: manually mounted versus SMT or PCB which can fail (what do the dimplex panel heaters use? manually mounted and soldered).
Then look where the temp control sensor is located and whether it is thermally isolated or not. (Hot thing next to me - switch off!)
All these factors come into play when you are looking at ROOM heating efficiency. Joule's Law is a law - granted. But fundamental physics and applied engineering are two separate, if related, disciplines.
Get a panel heater and open it up. Do the same with a storage heater. I imagine you already have. Then talk about efficiency and quality comparisons once you have picked your jaw up off the floor. Or show a picture to a client and see which one they point at and say "I want that one, please."

 

[nicelydone]

I was never arguing over quality, there is no doubt a difference in quality of manufacture between brands. Some products have only 12 months warranty where others have 10 years which is worth quite a lot. I was making the simple point about efficiency and running costs. The key is all in the control and the building thermal efficiency. When maintaining a set room temperature, lets say 20 deg C, if the room or property loses 500 watts per hour the heater needs to use 500 watts per hour to maintain the set point. Any more input than 500 watts would raise the room temperature, any less would see a drop in room temperature. If that same heater was placed in a room with poor thermal efficiency ( no insulation, single glazed etc ) and the room was losing 1000 watts per hour of heat the heater would need to use 1000 watts of heat to replace that lost heat and maintain the set point. Any heating product with a good electronic thermostat would do exactly this. You agree that all electric resistance heating is 100% efficient, then it doesn't matter whether you are heating oil, air, stone etc, the element still creats the same heat, the density of the transfer medium just determines whether that heat goes directly in to the room or is delayed and by how long. The heat created by the element is exactly the same, if the oil or stone stays hot after switching the product off, it is just because there is residual heat held in the transfer medium that otherwise would have been in the room. The 'perception' of warmth can be different with products which give radiant heat as well as convection due to the radiant heat heating people and objects directly and the convection heating the air. With radiant heat a person can feel warmer and therefore maybe turn the thermostat down a notch or two. I do agree with you on storage heating - Useless for those people who are out all day at work.

 

[shaney310879]

im thinking of supplying and fitting these but dont want to provide a branded product which is nothing more than hype and could give my company a bad name. Are these heaters actually any good? I get the whole "1kw in - 1kw out" but isnt the benefit of the rointe that its design enables a more efficient heating of the room? Where your standard panel heaters only heat directly in front of them the rointe circulates the heat around the whole room.
The problem is alot of posters on these forums are quick to slate pretty much every new product that comes into the world and i dont want to refuse a product on the basis that some peeps are just trying to prove they're right.
I know rointe have had some bad press recently with the ASA but take out their claims of 60% reductions etc are they actually good as a product?

 

[nicelydone]

The quality of the manufacturing of the product may be very good, as I'm sure many of the other electric radiators on the market are. The Rointe radiator has a 10 year warranty, there are other electric radiators on the market with 15, 25 and even 30 year warranties.

I would think all these products have a good build quality but the fact remains that they alll have exactly the same efficiency and running costs.

In terms of method of heating, you have the wrong idea about panel heaters. Panel heaters work by method of convection - the air is heated by the hot element, the air then rises and is replaced by more air to be heated and this in turn rises. Convection heating creates a continuous warm air circulation. Panel heaters create very little radiant heat.

The Rointe heater is also predominantly a convection heater, they say the surface temperature during operation is less than 40 deg C, so it is not much of a ' radiator ' as it is operating at a low Delta T. The Rointe heater heats in a very similar way to a panel heater. The main difference being that the element is heating oil before heating the aluminium, before heating the air rather than the element directly heating the air.

The big problem with Rointe is the nonsense claims of energy saving or '60% equivalent ratio of no consumption' which just means that the thermostat works by only providing heat to counteract the heat loss of the room as any electronic thermostat would do.

In their test they used a 1.43kW heater to keep a room at 21C over a 24 hour period and the average consumption was 560 watts. i.e. 40% of max output.

If they had used a 3kW heater in the same test it would have had an '82% equivalent ratio of no consumption' .

Whatever size heater was used, the heat loss would still have been 560 watts per hour and if any more than 560 watts per hour was put in to the room the room temperature would have risen. If any less than 560 watts of heat was put in to the room, the room temperature would have fallen.

Any electric heating product with an electronic thermostat would have exactly mirrored the Rointe test results.

 

[shaney310879]

its a shame they have been so misleading. I think the Rointe systems do look better than most others on the market and the sales stuff they provide is very professionally put together. But their encounter with the ASA has put me on the back foot a bit. As long as i make it clear to the customer that they are paying for design over function and that there are other equally efficient heaters to chose from then I feel I wont be misleading. Just bit hesitant as the only people that really know about Rointe is people in the trade. I hate to supply a large block of high quality flats with these only for it to become a national knowlegde that they tell porkies!!!

 

[jpdevine]

Hi,

From what I understand Rointe heaters are state-of-the-art energy efficient electric radiators that use patented technology called, 'Optimizer Energy Plus', which controls temperature variations to a fraction of a degree.

If you are looking for an off-gas solution, I would recommend using the Rointe K Series

Hope this helps.

JP