UKH

I just had a visit from a salesman for a company called Fischer, having enquired about heat pump installation.

He told me that their package comes with a compulsory storage heater, to help bring the house up to temperature quicker than a standard heat pump system.

When I asked about the efficiency of the electric heater, he said it would produce 3.5kW of heat for every 1kW of electricity it used - giving the exact same COP as he'd given for the heat pump.

Things started to get a bit tense when I indicated that I didn't think electric storage heaters could be that efficient, more tense when I said I didn't believe it was compatible with the laws of thermodynamics, and when I told him I thought he could get a Nobel prize for proving his claims he promptly left.

Such a shame he left, I'd have loved to have learned how they do it.

These products generally work in the following way:

Heat pump operation to meet a "base load" of heat loss. This is enough to keep your house warm once it is warm. This capacity is only sized to overcome heat loss from fabric losses, infiltration etc. This is meant to be super efficient ie 350% (though probably closer to 250% on a seasonal basis).

Direct electric heating as a boost to allow warm up. This will be used to provide high capacity to warm the house up when you turn the heating on and need a large capacity. If you didn't have this the system would not really be capable of heating the house up from cold. These will be standard electric heaters at efficiency of 100%.

If you have a super well insulated new build these may work well as the cool down rate is so slow that the direct electric heating is barely used. Perhaps a few cold days a year and to recover things after you leave all the doors and windows open all day.

In a poorly insulated house where you use your heating on a profile ie. heat it to 20 dg for getting out of bed, let it drop until 6 pm when you warm it up again to 20 dg for the evening whilst you are home these are a disaster. In this usage pattern you use them in direct electric mode nearly all the time. It cost you lots to install, you could have just installed panel heaters, and it cost a fortune to use.

See NIBE units in the media.

Indeed, but the salesman was very insistent this was not the case.

He had a very slick presentation on the benefits of their system, and wasn't prepared to deviate.

Kept telling me it was to do with the construction and special materials their heater was made from, etc., even when it was clear I had some knowledge of what I was talking about.

It's quite possible he wasn't scientifically literate enough to understand that the spiel he was giving was bollox, but presumably someone with understanding had told him to say it.

I'm posting here because I think it could be very convincing if you don't have a scientific background.

Also, he mentioned keeping elderly people warm a few times, giving me the impression they might target the elderly.

Is there a route to report such dodgy selling?

Is it possible that (a) the storage heater is charged by the heat pump once the house has warmed up, and then is discharged ar the start of the next heating cycle? (b) the sales person didn’t understand what it really did or couldn’t successfully communicate that?

Or they’re just having people on…

Edit: crossed over with your second post which pretty much nullifies my charitable approach.

These are not all bollocks. I was very reluctantly led to specifying about three hundred of a similar product (exhaust air heat pumps) in a large new multiresidentual development.

When properly specified they are like magic and after kicking the tyres very carefully we concluded they would deliver very high CoPs on an annual basis using real world data.

Note that this was built to passivehause standards. In this instance I was happy that provided you left the windows shut and relied on the mech vent the electric panel heaters would never come on. Panel heaters just there for insurance (and to cover DHW reheat periods as it used the same heat pump).

It's good that you want to see the good in people 😁

It's a clay core around electric wires, but you see they've made a special clay core with all sorts of metal oxides and things in it that allows the heat to be held for longer so that you end up getting more heat out of it than the electricity you put in.

Also, the clay has a high coefficient of heat transfer so it can heat your house quickly, but that in no way prevents it from holding onto the heat for a long time so that you get more heat out.

And the special deep flutings on the radiator help it radiate three times as much heat as a standard radiator, but also help it convect more heat round the room because it sucks air up through them.

It truly is a marvel of human endeavour.

Indeed, I can see the use case for such a set up, but that's not what I was being sold. Not least because we were sat in a 1930s semi, a long way from passivehause.

Yes. Our previous posts cross.  It’s clear now there’s no room to be charitable.

At least he wasn’t claiming they cold fusion was being achieved in the clay core.  There have been people elsewhere in the world touting such….

Trading Standards would be my go to point.

Mis selling of magical clay-electric radiators is nothing new, the bullshit and the prices can be truly spectacular.

jk

I've seen this sort of thing many times. I reckon it's a bit like those scam emails full of spelling mistakes - they do it deliberately to filter out anyone intelligent, so they don't waste time trying to con someone who isn't going to fall for it. Salespeople never have a clue about the product, they just have a way of winning people over. So they spout any old shite, and as soon as you show you know what you're talking about they realise they are out of their depth and they're wasting their time, so they bail and head off to their next mark.

I f**kin hate sales people.

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/fischer-future-heat-uk-face-4821958

Seems trading standards are already familiar with them.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Obviously didn't make them change behaviour.

I also noticed they've had a couple of complaints to the ASA against them which were upheld.

If (mis)selling overpriced products wasn't enough, it appears the parent company also own an energy supplier. If they can persuade someone to switch they further benefit from having sold heaters that don't particularly store heat. Very smart business to have thought how they can continue to extract money from their customers.