I bought a Lucht 1200w heater for about 480 a few years ago. They are a simple plugin all the time ones that heat day and night which cost the same roughly as a storage heater - about 1 euro a day. The beauty is that you can switch them on/off immediately rather than wait 24 hours.
In terms of thermal comfort, the lucht heaters are a world apart from storage heaters.
Are you saying you the heat from one feels different to the heat from another?
In relation to cost, the on-demand heaters will cost roughly twice as much to produce the same amount of heat as a storage heater, as there is little to nothing between them in terms of efficiency. The difference will come in your usage patterns, and it's that which should drive a decision on which is best for a particular scenario.
Yes, the heat feels like proper central heating rather than the dry, stuffy heat traditional electric heaters give.
Plus vs storage heaters, it's a constant heat on demand rather than the nightly build up & then inflexible day output.
The lucht heaters are designed to only use electricity for around half the time they are on, with a ceramic panel that holds the heat better than panel heaters & they have a thermostat to set the temp too.
Radiant heat is radiant heat, any perceived differences will be psychological. Some storage and other electric heaters include fans to add a convection element, this can have a drying effect. Radiant heaters will promote a certain amount of convection also as warm air rises to be replaced by cooler. The Lucht heaters use an increased surface area of fins to encourage more convection.
That's where the usage pattern comes into play. If the house is occupied most of the day, storage heaters will offer a significantly cheaper option assuming they are sized and set up properly.
That's the way pretty much any electrical heater will work. Lucht and a number of other brands use ceramic plates to build a thermal mass, other materials are used also, but the material makes no difference to the quality of the heat, just the rate is dissipates at. Oil is a better medium than ceramic for stabilising the cycling effect of the heating/ cooling cycle, but they are bulkier.
We can agree to disagree. Having suffered with traditional electric heating for a decade & then switching to mainly lucht since, the difference is far from just psychological!
Gas has a high fixed cost and you will have an electricity connection anyway.If at all possible I would avoid using electricity to heat space or water.
Electricity is obviously less efficient for space and water heating.
Gas has a high fixed cost and you will have an electricity connection anyway.
Electricity is obviously less efficient for space and water heating. But what if you have a small, well-insulated apartment and you are rarely home? We once lived in a second-floor, south-facing apartment and only needed the gas boiler on about four months of the year for space heating.
I'd be happy to see the sums on this if anyone has done them.
used them on and off as required surely they would be more efficient than oil/gas.
We have an old 20yr boiler on kerosene with rads which are not very effective. We have an electric shower. But we have no on demand hot water at sink kitchen/bathroom when needed. As there are only 3 in the house oil is not looking at being very efficent. Looking at alternatives that can make life easier, ie. undersink on demand water heater kitch/bathroom with panel heaters in rooms that are actually being used. These can be un plugged and moved to any room as needed.As per SparkRite's point above, don't confuse efficiency with cost effectiveness. All forms of electric heat will be close to 100% efficient, but that's not to say they will be the cheapest.
The SEAI produce regular reports comparing domestic heating fuel costs. Electric heating remains the most expensive per delivered kWh of heat energy. Where it starts to make sense is in super efficient very well insulated homes where the low demand for heat makes oil or gas more expensive.
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