On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 10:38:22 -0800, Tricky Dicky wrote:

Tim+ and David I am encouraged by your reports that the Kickspace
heaters are working well for because to be honest it would be the ideal
solution for any new kitchen. Our kitchen is 3 x 2.6m galley type
kitchen with a door at each end, any replacement will have the same
layout the only changes being where appliances will be and types of
cupboard. This does not leave much scope for using traditional radiators
so Kickspace heaters would be a convenient solution. It is my intention
to get the one we have working and see how it performs. The one we have
is the Myson 500 and having had the opportunity to remove it and fettle
it a bit the actual heat exchanger matrix seems quite small about a
third the size of the radiator in the bathroom which is a marginally
smaller room. So is this heater adequate and if not how many are needed
for our kitchen?

Richard

A few points:

(1) The kickspace heater is a fan heater and so blows air through the
heater matrix (much like the heater in a car) and thus is more efficient
at transferring heat from the hot water to the air. Also, thinking about
it, the heat transfer surface is all those little fins so the actual
surface area is probably quite high for the volume. [I am assuming that it
is a traditional radiator or towel rail in the bathroom.] Without the fan
the heat output is very low - which is just as well as you don't have a TRV
to stop the water flowing. Remember not to store anything "heat sensitive"
just above the kickspace heater.

(2) Calculate the volume of the room, use a converter to see how many BTU
you need, and match that to the nearest Myson (or other brand) heater.
Sanity check to see if you have the correct size. A thermostat is a good
idea because you can chuck a lot of heat into the room when cooking.

(3) We have a large living/dining room and kitchen which has a galley
kitchen along one side (using all the wall space), bifolds along another
side, and a log burner and cupboard space (plus internal door) along the
third side. This leaves only one wall to hang a radiator.

So we have a (quite large) radiator on one wall with a TRV to provide the
main heating when required, and the two kickspace heaters to provide a
rapid warm up. We don't really expect them to come on much during the day,
just first thing in the morning.

On general principles all radiators should if possible have TRVs (you need
some volume available to prevent the boiler cycling AIUI) to prevent an
individual room overheating if the boiler linked thermostat in another
room is calling for heat. For kickspace heaters you can't normally use a
TRV so the wall thermostat is the usual option.

As a side effect the kickspace heaters in our system provide the "always
on" radiator volume which means we can run with TRVs on all wall mounted
radiators.

In our case, also we also need a thermostat because the thermal gain even
in winter is enough to heat the room on a sunny day. Again if the log
burner is lit you don't want the kickspace heaters chucking out additional
heat.



So - not happy that the flexible hoses supplied with the heater are a
known source of failure.

Still wondering about the small possibility of an airlock somewhere
obscure in your system which would stop water flowing without a direct
flush back through the flexible pipe (as suggested up thread).

Also toying with the idea of persuading a vascular surgeon to put a stent
in your flexible pipe. Or just gently push a length of small bore flexible
plastic tubing up the pipe to provide a restricted flow until you can fix
it.

Cheers

Dave R

--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box