Does anyone here have the Cadet SoftHeat hydronic electric baseboard heaters at home or have any customers that own them?
These are the type that consist of a finned copper tube filled with an 80/20-water/glycol mix and use an immersed heating element. I’ve only seen these in a couple of homes, but the owners generally seemed very pleased with them.
Other than the obvious safety advantage of lower operating temperature, are these worth the added expense over standard electric baseboard heaters?

Thanks

link: http://www.cadetco.com/show_product.php?prodid=1010

Hi KJay,
I have used Q-mark's hydronic heats quite often. The intial cost is alittle high however they claim to have a payback period, and deliver a nice even heat. Most customers tell me they think they are worth the additional cost.


Ob

I have installed many of them. They are awesome. I wouldn't recommend any other kind of baseboard heat.

I lived in a house in Northern NJ in the late 70's that had them throughout. The heat was great and the bills were better than my neighbor (with an identical new house) using oil heat.

They are quite a bit more expensive than traditional units, but well worth the difference from a consumer's perspective.

Thanks for the replies. It sounds like this type of heater has been around for quite a while and is pretty well regarded.
In my area, for a brief period last year, when fuel prices were at their all time high, it was probably the first time in close to 30-years that electric heat was more economical to operate than oil or gas fired heating systems.
I’m beginning to think it may be possible, if fuel costs eventually approach anything near those peak levels again, that premium electric heaters such as this type might once again become a viable alternative as a primary home heating system.

When you're talking electric resistance heat like this, they're all equally inefficient. You're not going to see a payback period, either- 15000W of heat is 15000W regardless of how it gets from the resistance element to the room. This (and any other electric strip heater) is going to use about 2.5x as much electricity as an electric heat pump for the same heating capacity.

Immersing the heating element does reduce the risk of fire vs one with unencapsulated toaster-stype heating elements, though.