Radiateurs à inertie

Does anyone have experience of these?
I have read a lot of write-ups, but have not seen any reference to charging during heures creuse to store heat for release during the day.
So are they similar to UK night storage heaters, or something different?
Could they be expected to deliver heat 12 hours after charging finishes?

No Mike, just a fluid filled radiator. Everything else spoken is marketing bs.
The laws of physics and thermal dynamics apply.

To be fair it’s pretty fecking difficult to avoid these. Outside a sci-fi movie that is.

Any views on infra-red radiators?

Supposed to have much lower running costs.

Or marketing departments :grinning:

There was a lady on SFN who had a number of these fitted. Maybe still around and could answer?

I’m by no means an expert, but the way I see it is that if you put one kw of electricity into an heater/radiator/convector etc, then you get (hopefully very nearly) one kw of heat back out. The type of heater just defines how quickly or slowly that heat is released. As we all know, electric isn’t cheap, electric heating therefore isn’t cheap to run .

Slight change in topic - whatever happened to the radiators which had special bricks inside to retain the heat??

Friends have a woodburner which is built of rocks/stone which retains the heat for several days after the fire goes out.

Something similar, heated on cheap-rate electric - why not ??

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18 years ago we had electric storage heaters fitted in our then holiday home (a big box full of bricks) thinking that as a dry system it was preferred over a wet system as we were not always there and no worries of leaks. The village sparky installed them and at the time he had not seen them before even though he had plied his trade for many years, must be an english thing he told us!
Out neighbour’s would switch the system on a few days before our arrival so we could be welcomed by a warm house, nice idea but never worked. At best they provided background heat ie. Took the chill off but nothing more.
They ran on night tariff electric but still cost a fortune.
We sold the house a few years ago to a very nice Dutch couple who we bump into from time to time and the first topic of conversation is always “those dammed heaters,how do you make them work?”.
We all know that electricity is not cheap and to ensure that whatever appliance it powers it must be efficient and electric heating systems are anything but.
I renovated our now home from the bare shell upwards, from the outside it is still a quaint 200 year old farmhouse but has a new all singing all dancing home on the inside with more integral insulation that you could shake a hairy stick at.
It’s raining today and was much cooler of late but still the room temperature is at 22 and does not drop below 15 first thing on a winter morning after the heating has stopped the previous evening.
Our log store is full and all ready to fuel our wood fired heating system but unless it snows before November the heating will not be used, a cosy fire in the early autumn evenings should suffice.
PS. I let the dogs out into a cold and wet morning todayand they soon returned to sit with me who is still wearing shorts and tee shirt in our warm house of 21 degrees.

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Thanks John. I do have a basic understanding of the laws of physics, but I also have experience of night storage heaters in the UK. These worked by heating a large mass of ceramic bricks in an insulated box. They were capable of retaining heat for many hours, though they tended to become ineffective by late afternoon.
Are these not available in France? Is there some regulation that bans their use, or is it just that they don’t suit the average lifestyle?
I agree that claims of savings of up to 45% must be wildly exaggerated for a device that does not take advantage of cheap rate electricity. But then I know that “up to” is marketing speak for “less than!”

Old-style storage radiators must have been (and perhaps still are) available in France…

An elderly lady spent the last years of her life living in one room of what is now our house. There was a large storage radiator filled with heavy bricks. We dismantled it and chucked all but the bricks, which are incredibly heavy.

These bricks have been used time and again to “hold something down” and 2 are permanent fixtures stopping my whirly-dryer from blowing away in strong winds.

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Well done Stella, at least you have put to good use what I consider to have been a useless component of a useless and expensive form of heating. We call our rotating clothes line a Whirlygig :joy:

Not sure if still available here in France but my experience was that France had “moved on” from these big box monsters almost 2 decades ago.

Because it’s 100 years out of date :grin:

You exaggerate! They were a new thing in the UK only 60 years ago. I remember them well! But I cannot imagine what radiateurs à inertie have to offer as an improvement.

These are nothing more than glorifed electric heaters, using liquid (oil) or solids as storage medium. Marketing and desigers have re-wrapped the old storage heater in a new packaging and given it a new nice sounding name. As written in earlier posts, Marketing bull shit and not worth the cost.

None whatsoever.

The stoves built from these rocks are very modern… :smile::smile: come from some scandinavian country I think.

I would love to have one in my home, but the floorboards would not support the weight.

Ha ha… this is whirligig means to me… (9 minutes of sheer nostalgia)

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You mean the soap stone versions?