I'm not sure if my friends in the UK/Ireland and other places have a heater in the Bathroom.
But anyhow, I used to get these types of heaters all the time, to take back to the workshop, to blow all of the accumulated dust and other rubbish out of them.
Up-shot of this topic is, if not maintained well, these plastic heaters can be a fire hazard.
They have an over-temperature cut-out on them, but often, it never trips until 100C is reached.
Plastic on these heaters often melts at 85C.
But, if people would just get the things blown out with compressed air every so often, we would save a few house fires.

Are you referring to the modern wall-mount fan heaters? They seem to have become fairly popular here in recent years.

I have a radiant heater in my bathroom mounted on the wall opposite the tub. It's one with a tubular element, about 1kW and adjustable rear reflector. These were pretty common before the days of central heating in most houses.

Dear Mike!

We have those in the office. If compressed air really helps, I'll use it.
Thank you for the advise.
I hate those heaters, they always smelling. I have no idea why they put a grid on the top, whenever heat moves upside?
I have central water heating at home, but the air is so darn dry, I can hardly breathe at night.

Trumpy,

If they stuff up as much as our bathroom vent fans do they'd be pretty leathal!

You occasionally see them here they're not all that common though as most homes have central heating these days. Radiant heaters were certainly quite a normal fixture in bathrooms in homes built from 1900 - 1950. However, I don't think there are all that many of them around anymore.


I think you're refering to this type:

The most common types of electric heating that you do still find in modern bathrooms here are electrically heated towel rails and electric underfloor heating installed under tiles.

The bathrooms in our house have these:



(Part of the normal hydronic central heating system and throws out so much heat it's ridiculous! The bathroom can reach sauna-like tempratures at times.. we had to install thermostatic valves on it)

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 02-06-2005).]

Never had such a prob with our towel radiator. We had a thermostatic valve fitted right at the beginning, but it's always all the way open.

In old houses you'd occasionally see infrared wall heaters in bathrooms, sometimes together with central heating ("During summer a good German doesn't need heating and turns off the boiler!" *sarcasm*).

We have something like this http://www.potrebitel.ru/data/5/10/images/453-02_CNS.jpg

at the office

If it was in me, I'd do some kind of floor-heating that is enough for all rooms.
Maybe with circulated hot water.

Gloria,
With respect to your Office heaters.
Depending upon their age, you have to disconnect the heater from the supply and blow the thing out with a Compressed Air Gun.
It's best left to an Electrician, because the heater needs to be opened up and blown out from the inside.
Indescriminately blowing compressed air into a heater will do more harm than good, especially where hot elements are concerned.

Most of those appliences are supposed to get an occasional vacuum cleaning. You should always vacuum the air intake grill though, not where the air blows out as you will just suck dirt into the elements.

If it's really clogged up, it's definitely best to get an electrician to fix it.

And its advisable to turn it off first!

"I have central water heating at home, but the air is so darn dry, I can hardly breathe at night." Try placing an oven tray or saucepan with about an inch or two of water over the heater outlet (not all the way over as to block airflow). The water heats up & evaporates & puts moisture back into the air. Used to use this method with pot-bellied stoves with a big kettle of water on top.

That sounds like the sort of East German propaganda of the communist era.

32Vac, thank you for the advise, but it is still not enough and I'm so depressed. I even put wet towels on the tubes, but that makes them rusty which can cause the brake of the tubes which is a disaster in a 10 storey house.
I'm looking for a low energy vapouring system, or something like that.
Tho we can hardly breathe in the morning and go out to drink twice every night.

Gloria,
What you need at home is a way to bring the Humidity of the rooms up to what it should be.
Even if it is something simple as a glass of water sitting somewhere in the room.
Humidity will find it's own level, but introducing steam into a room has it's own problems during the winter.
Good ventilation also helps, even though having a few windows open during the Winter, may sound strange, air ventilation also helps to correct Humidity problems.

Yes, should be.

Paul,
Sorry I missed that comment the first time around.
I must say that they were rather popular here as well.
To a certain extent, I reckon that they gave a better, more even sort of heat, not a blast of hot air as with the fan-type heaters.
Just a note Dave about bathroom ventilation fans, AS/NZS 3000 requires that they be supplied by an SELV (Safety Extra Low Voltage) supply, meaning 12 or 24V.

More like Nazi era.

Here's a couple of examples of ceiling-mount
Fans used Down-under:

From aussie240:

For the purpose of comparison- In the States the most common for of supplimental bathroom heat is a heater built into the exhaust fan/light unit.
This is either a fan that does NOT vent, but simply recirculated bathroom air after heating it, or an additional light socket into which an infra-red bulb (250 watt) is inserted.

Some clever folks simply install a recessed light fixture, and place an infra-red bulb in it. The parabolic reflector in these bulbs does a fine job of heating the floor below- quite nice when you step out of the shower!

Older homes (such as mine) have a space heater built into the wall, with a simple toggle switch. These units, which are little more than glorified toasters, usually have their own 115 v, 15 amp circuit.

None of these methods are usually GFCI (RCD) protected.

A fancier type of heater mounts on the wall, usually along the bottom of the wall. It has a heating element inside a finned, oil-filled tube. When hot, a small fan comes on and circulates air over the tube. The thermostat is part of the switch mounted on the unit, and is adjusted by turning the knob. This style is usually fed by a 240 volt, 20 amp circuit.

I have seen quartz bare heaters which some may find scary.

Then there are the old parabolic radiant heaters, which have a parabolawith a porcelan cone in the center, wrapped in nicrome coil.

Here in Canada, you have a smaller basboard, or a fan forced plain coul heater, either at 240V.

Out bathroom has possibility for neither, so we use a portabe 1.5 KW heater(usually in 750 W mode though), fortunatey of course, plugged into the bathroom GFI recepticle.

Most very old heaters are scary. They were called "electric fires" here so didn't generally come with much more in terms of safety protection than the real fire in your hearth.

I'm not very keen on the modern plastic fan heaters either though.

Our present bathroom has a towel rail / radiator connected off the oil-fired central heating system, ( pressurised water/glycol at 20psi ), which runs at a 75C (165F). We find this more than adequate, as the house is well insulated. The new bathrooms in the longhouse will have underfloor heating using the same boiler/furnace, but with thermostatic by-pass valves to put the liquid through at 40C (104F). I've decided to install similar towel rail/rads, as above, off the 75C supply as backup.

We had one of those Belling 'Electric Fires' when I was a lad! It had 2x 1kw bars, but Ma frowned on using them both at once. "I'm not made of money, me lad!" , (a bit of an understatement- we were always flat broke!) I cringe now, but we used to toast bread on it at tea-time, holding a slice up to the bars with a big brass toasting fork! Eeek!
Alan

This is pretty much how our central heating system works:



The only difference is that we have a natural gas and pressure jet (gasoil) boilers as the two heat inputs.

The copper cylinder is the hotwater tank.


That's the actual 3 pumps + other gear for "zoning" the system.

You wire the pumps, boilers and thermostats into this unit and it controls everything centrally.
http://www.systemlink.ie/ for more info (I think the system's patented)

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 07-19-2005).]

djk,
Why two boilers in your setup?

For my system, I got a design manual from a government quango, then designed the system on the following parameters;
Diesel burner; boiler/furnace, 36kw, ( 115,000 bthu) - also runs rads in 'new' house.
15mm pex-polythene underfloor pipe, all loops = 100m (328'), 10 loops total = 1 km ; 6 on ground floor, spaced at 225mm (9") centers. 22mm (7/8") od copper feeds to manifolds, as the longhouse is 40 meters (130') long including the boiler room.
Floor water temperature 40C (104F), and boiler temp 75C (167F), planned settings.
Thermostatic mix/return valves provide floor water- 2 zones only.
100W/m2 output under insulated cement floor.
70W/m2, 1st floor under wood floor.
Ground floor will be ceramic tiles.
Total area 90m2 per floor.
Est output 15kw (9+6) max.
(When we move next door, the new house will just be on frost stats in winter.)
3 circ pumps, 1 per zone , 1 x boiler circulation.
Programmable controllers, 1 each zone.
Thermostats, 1 per zone.
Insulation is 2" extruded ps under the concrete, and 8" of rockwooll, 13mm drywall lined ( 1/2" sheetrock) walls/roof, + double glazing. Under the 24mm wood floor, it's alum foil reflectors on 25mm insulated board, these zones are also air 'sealed'.
Water pressure regulated at 1.5 bar, 20psi, by a diaphragm gas/water bottle. I assume yours is in the boiler?
We heat all our water by electricity, as cheap rate tariff is about the same price per kwh (gross) as diesel oil in France.
I have run up the ground floor system, still building first floor.
I put 30% glycol antifreeze + inhibitor in the system. I can go to England in the winter and not worry about power outs, ( our 500ma poco trip does not reset itself after a power cut.)
Her indoors also wants reversible aircon and VMC (mech venting), and (apparently) were getting a unit similar to the one you posted, where I'm going to put it is my problem!
Plus we have a woodstove in new house, and I'll be fitting one in the renovation, but I still have some issues to solve for that, namely a remote air supply.
Hope to post pics on completion.
Alan

Oh yeah... i _love_ those things! Still use one occasionally if I can make sure there are no combustibles in a 10-feet circle around. Last winter I came home t a pretty cold house since the gas central heating had been down to anti freeze for the weekend. Until the radiators got really warm I used the "heating sun" as they were called in old-fashioned German. Mine is 'only' 600 Watts, there were some up to 2000W I think. Still it heats up quite nicely!

"A pic of what's in my bathroom...1948 vintage though the flex is somewhat younger. It's a typical 1KW bar radiator. Don't you love the thought given to safety?". I bought one of these in 1989 with a better (safer) grille on the front. I use it as a dummy load to test generators as it is 1200W (approx 5 amps). They are still around but looking a bit flasher than the old units.

My grandmother had a radiant heater like that with two bars (2kW) and ludicrously inadequate guards against things touching the elements. On washing days it was used in the kitchen scullery, on a nice damp stone floor, and it had a clothes horse placed in front of it with wet pillowcases and sheets steaming and scorching away and tumbling merrily down on top of the thing.

Mind you, her whole house was a death trap by modern standards. The gas pilot lights on the cooker often used to blow out, so you'd go into a roomful of gas in the morning. She also had an outrageous electric mangle that had no switches or safety cut-outs at all -- plug it in, and the rollers would turn, pulling through towels, fingers, knuckles, the lot. She also used to use one of those terrifying drip-feed paraffin heaters that at certain times used to go up in a fireball, apparently for no reason. "Oh, it does that. Does anyone want more to eat?", she'd say, without turning a hair.

They still show up in junk shops from time to time. Add a few bits around the reflector and they're a pretty good imitation of a 1930s Buck Roger's style "death ray" gun!

Jooles: that description sounds really wild!
I remember having read Belgium has very low safety standards regarding gas...

We used to have a huge gas fireplace, you might have seen them, actually a closed gas heater inside a big porcelaine enclosure (maybe 1m tall and 1 1/2 m wide) intended to look like a classic wood stove. Imagine something like this but uglier:


It had piezo ignition, thermostat and everything, but occasionally it just wouldn't ignite properly, and a huge (1m wide and at least half a metre high) flame would shout out of the front bottom... pretty impressing!

Though I still prefer catalytic gas heaters... they used to be real common here some 30 years ago I think and some have survived. Nothing better than sitting in front of the blueish-red glow of such a slightly scary brown beast...

Here you can occasionally see old quartz heaters in bathrooms. They have no bars, grills or whatever, just the reflector with the open rods. They were usually mounted on a wall, out of reach though. The ones that are still sold have grilles in front of the rods. We still have one around waiting to be installed again... after the central heating came we didn't have the time and so far nobody missed it...

Parabolic heaters are still sold in the USA.

Commonly called the "heat dish"

[img]http://store1.yimg.com/I/store3-store_1851_8389935[/img]

These small electric radiant 'fires' are excellent in a small space. At the local sawmill Joelle has one in his office-cum sharpening-shed. Nice to be in there in the winter with a cup of scalding coffee talking timber and warming your butt, while the snow whirls past the window. In six months this current lovely hot weather will be a distant memory! ( Sorry Trumpy!! - any blizzards yet?! Ha Ha! )

PS. pic: Buck Rogers just Raygunned the cat!

As soon as I saw that I was thinking how typical it is for the cat to find the warm spot!

It's nowhere near the bathroom, but I have this radiant heater from the 1960s:



The guards had been improved considerably by this time. It has the red "Fireglow" bulbs below the plastic coal, typical of the period.

Here it is in darkness with just one of the two bars on:

While we're on the subject of parablic heaters, here's my two examples; this one appears to be from the early 40's:


This one is somewhat older, maybe from the late 20's. The safety aspects of both these are a worry. A two wire flex with no earth terminal provided is one thing but also having the flex terminate right on the back of the heating element seems to be unwise...anyone who's serviced heating appliances knows the outcome of that. Finally we have no cord anchorage of course, with the wires merely passing through a porcelain grommet and straight to the terminals.
Someone who has fitted a three core flex in the past merely twisted the earth wire around the stand at the back.


SvenNYC,
I like the look of that "heat dish". I had no idea those things were still being made. They certainly don't sell them here anymore. Is that a current model? I might have a look around to see if anyone's selling them online and get one. Of course I'd need two in series, or make up a triac regulator to drop the voltage.