On Oct 19, 9:21*am, Tim Watts wrote:
On 19/10/10 00:58, Michael Chare wrote:

"Simon C." . wrote in message
.. .

Thanks for that. Do you know what sort of oil its likely to be filled
with? Nothing else nasty? I get a bit paranoid about home safety after
a near nasty fire a while ago [as mentioned in a prev thread]

If you are using a heater that it is leaking oil I would say that your
fears are not paranoia but fully justified.

I doubt the oil is anything nasty. But it might cause damage to furnishings.

The big problem is that if the rad loses significant oil, it's going to
stop working once the oil fails to be able to circulate properly. Then
the OP is at the mercy of the overheat failsafe (assuming there is one[1])
.

[1] Don't assume anything. I had a couple of fan heaters that were of
mid quality (not Honeywell good but the next level down). The sodding
things had bottom air intakes to suck the fluff in which blocked the
element causing local hot spots and resultant jets of red hot air that
then melted the crap plastic grills or casing. No effective thermal
fuse. IIRC they did have thermal fuses but those couldn't reliably
detect local hotspots.

This year I have some De'Longhi oil rads - boy those are good. The panel
arrangement (they call it the chimney - look for Dragon or Vento models)
is bloody good. A 2kW unit that's about 600mm long really can put out
2kW without the internal stat cycling - unlike the cheap crap B&Q sell
which are rated 1kW and probably put out about 300W based on the duty cycle.


Loss of oil wont cause the thing to overheat, the stat will function
as normal. Its only the element that'll overheat and die.


NT