Lot 20

[Cobster]

Oh dear. I was waiting for the day this happened.
I still use a 60 year old fan heater, it's on a thermostatic plug.
My workroom has a 50 year old Xpelair 3KW fan heater on the wall. Thats on a mechanical countdown timer. It came from a GPO telephone exchange.
My electrical wholesaler was able to provide a new element for it no problems and at a decent price.
As far as I'm concerned, timers and thermostats are "smart" - smarter than no controls at all.

PS: HID, Good point. Heating old buildings is hard, and I agree entirely.

[FrontSideBus]

A bit like new coffee machines that turn off the hot plate after about 15 minutes.
Needless to say that pissed me off so I hotwired it to be always on

[Kev]

Sounds like an xpelair sunfan my fire stations use them. Never had an element go, always been one of the 2 stats!

[Ash]

Being "smart" by itself does not save any electricity (that is, if you can set it to heat the same as a standard heater). This "smart" requirement is there to implement some logic limiting the use of the heater. (Joking aside, not by means of failure of the smart device itself)

I think it is along the lines of :

"Somebody somewhere said that the recommended temp for heating in winter is 18C"

"Since somebody somewhere said this, then of course no one should need a heater that heats the room above 18C ever"

"Let's save energy by banning everyone from heating the room above 18C"

"Bimetal thermostats (cheap ones that weren't calibrated each unit at manufacture) aren't precise enough. If we make them with set upper limit of 18C then some will end up allowing 20C and it will waste electricity, some will end up allowing no more than 16C and the users will flood the manufacturers with RMA's because they don't heat"

"So let's just require everything with digital thermostats"

[Cobster]

Which one is the Sunfan Kev? Mine is the WH30 3KW wall fan heater. Looking on their website, none of the old style heaters are in stock any more. The ban must be taking effect.

Post Office Telephones used a thermostat, a humidistat, a remote telephone switch (with mercury contacts) and a mechanical Venner override timer together to control their heating in each exchange. They weren't into wasting electricity - very different from today.

[Slyspark]

Ban came into effect on 01/01/2018 so by now, most of the remaining stocks of heaters have sold through.

[fluorescent]

I've just rescued a Dimplex AC3N 1500/3000w air curtain fan heater from the skip at work, nothing wrong with it. Just looked it up and they cost around £180! That's definitely going in my man shed.

[Kev]

I have loads of them in fire stations too.

[Beta 5]

Interesting, I hadn't heard much about this at the time, though it would explain why the Dimplex downflow fan heater I bought a couple of years ago has a 30 minute timer built in!
That said there still seems to be plenty of normal bi-metal thermostat controlled portable fan and convector heaters about, wasn't this supposed to affect those too?

I quite often use a nice 1973 Belling Tango 2 portable 2kW heater during the winter months. A slight clean and oiling of the motor bearings and it runs fine, nice and quiet with a tangential fan inside too!

[Slyspark]

So, Lot 20 only concerns heaters that can be permanently fixed to a wall. If they're free standing / portable, then this legislation does not cover them.