Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey
busy flicking through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing,
containing four or six mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator
and is apparently designed to blow the warm air from the radiator at 90
degrees to the wall, rather than allowing the warmth to rise and heat
the ceiling.

Good idea or snake oil?
--
Graeme

"Graeme" wrote in message
...

Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey busy flicking
through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing, containing four or six
mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator and is apparently designed to blow
the warm air from the radiator at 90 degrees to the wall, rather than allowing the
warmth to rise and heat the ceiling.

Good idea or snake oil?

It's such a pity the likes of Amazon don't sell this product.

As if they did then you could read their customer reviews.

All 829 of them.

HTH

In message , Moron Watch
writes
"Graeme" wrote in message
...

Good idea or snake oil?

It's such a pity the likes of Amazon don't sell this product.

As if they did then you could read their customer reviews.

My impression of amazon reviews is that they are often written by well
meaning people like my ever loving wife - which is why I asked here.
--
Graeme

On 23/09/16 15:16, Moron Watch wrote:
"Graeme" wrote in message
...

Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey busy flicking
through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing, containing four or six
mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator and is apparently designed to blow
the warm air from the radiator at 90 degrees to the wall, rather than allowing the
warmth to rise and heat the ceiling.

Good idea or snake oil?

It's such a pity the likes of Amazon don't sell this product.

As if they did then you could read their customer reviews.

All 829 of them.

HTH



Well fan blown rads are smaller for same power output.

So the principle works

Whether its worth it as aftermarket addition is moot.

--
All political activity makes complete sense once the proposition that
all government is basically a self-legalising protection racket, is
fully understood.

In article ,
Graeme wrote:

Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey
busy flicking through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing,
containing four or six mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator
and is apparently designed to blow the warm air from the radiator at 90
degrees to the wall, rather than allowing the warmth to rise and heat
the ceiling.

Good idea or snake oil?

Excellent idea. The waste heat from the fans will help heat the room.
Using more expensive electricity, of course. And the noise will be welcome
too.

--
*If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 23-Sep-16 3:44 PM, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Graeme wrote:

Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey
busy flicking through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing,
containing four or six mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator
and is apparently designed to blow the warm air from the radiator at 90
degrees to the wall, rather than allowing the warmth to rise and heat
the ceiling.

Good idea or snake oil?

Excellent idea. The waste heat from the fans will help heat the room.
Using more expensive electricity, of course. And the noise will be welcome
too.


Exactly what I was thinking!

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)"
writes
In article ,
Graeme wrote:

Good idea or snake oil?

Excellent idea. The waste heat from the fans will help heat the room.
Using more expensive electricity, of course. And the noise will be welcome
too.

grin Indeed. The whole point of these things is apparently to
redirect heat, not give heat. I'm not convinced, and am rather hoping
(quietly) that someone is going to give me a good and compelling reason
to tell Wifey why we don't need to waste our money.
--
Graeme

Graeme submitted this idea :
grin Indeed. The whole point of these things is apparently to redirect
heat, not give heat. I'm not convinced, and am rather hoping (quietly) that
someone is going to give me a good and compelling reason to tell Wifey why we
don't need to waste our money.

Last winter a friends wife was telling me she was always complaining
one their rooms was always too cold. I suggested that a simple fix was
to put a fan heater blowing cold air, under the radiator to increase
the air flow/ increase the temperature. That worked. Faster air flow,
more heat transferred from rad to room.

So far as this item is concerned - yes, no reason why it wouldn't work
better, but I cannot see it saving much gas, if any - certainly not its
£40-£50 anytime soon. Then there is the small running cost on top.

On Friday, 23 September 2016 14:17:31 UTC+1, Graeme wrote:
Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey
busy flicking through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing,
containing four or six mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator
and is apparently designed to blow the warm air from the radiator at 90
degrees to the wall, rather than allowing the warmth to rise and heat
the ceiling.

Good idea or snake oil?
--
Graeme

If it accelerates the airflow through the radiator. it will increase the output.
If not, it won't.
I 'spect it also claims to reduce heat loss by directing the warm air away from the cold wall. Possibly true but the effect is miniscule.

Unless you have a problem with the room being cold, I wouldn't bother.

There might be a noise problem with the fans too.

Snake oil.

A more cost effective means is one of those reflective insulated panels that fixes on the wall behind the radiator.
Especially if it's a poorly insulated outer wall.

On 23/09/2016 17:08, harry wrote:
On Friday, 23 September 2016 14:17:31 UTC+1, Graeme wrote:
Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey
busy flicking through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing,
containing four or six mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator
and is apparently designed to blow the warm air from the radiator at 90
degrees to the wall, rather than allowing the warmth to rise and heat
the ceiling.

Good idea or snake oil?
--
Graeme

If it accelerates the airflow through the radiator. it will increase the output.
If not, it won't.
I 'spect it also claims to reduce heat loss by directing the warm air away from the cold wall. Possibly true but the effect is miniscule.

Unless you have a problem with the room being cold, I wouldn't bother.

There might be a noise problem with the fans too.

Snake oil.

A more cost effective means is one of those reflective insulated panels that fixes on the wall behind the radiator.
Especially if it's a poorly insulated outer wall.

Radiators are misnamed because most of the heat is convected compared to
the amount radiated.

On 23/09/2016 14:17, Graeme wrote:

Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey
busy flicking through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing,
containing four or six mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator
and is apparently designed to blow the warm air from the radiator at 90
degrees to the wall, rather than allowing the warmth to rise and heat
the ceiling.

Good idea or snake oil?

I would have thought (no, really!) that you'd be better off blowing the
air down through a double radiator.

I suppose it depends on whether you heat the room above, if there is
one. Buy one of these...

http://www.thermal.com/products/reveal/

....it'll pay for itself in decades, and it's great fun.

Cheers
--
Syd

On 23-Sep-16 5:08 PM, harry wrote:

I 'spect it also claims to reduce heat loss by directing the warm air
away from the cold wall. Possibly true but the effect is miniscule.


I was wondering about top floor rooms. There, any heat loss through the
ceiling is effectively completely lost.

On 23/09/16 16:33, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Graeme submitted this idea :
grin Indeed. The whole point of these things is apparently to
redirect heat, not give heat. I'm not convinced, and am rather hoping
(quietly) that someone is going to give me a good and compelling
reason to tell Wifey why we don't need to waste our money.

Last winter a friends wife was telling me she was always complaining one
their rooms was always too cold. I suggested that a simple fix was to
put a fan heater blowing cold air, under the radiator to increase the
air flow/ increase the temperature. That worked. Faster air flow, more
heat transferred from rad to room.

So far as this item is concerned - yes, no reason why it wouldn't work
better, but I cannot see it saving much gas, if any - certainly not its
£40-£50 anytime soon. Then there is the small running cost on top.

No it won't save fuel. What it does is increase radiator output.


--
New Socialism consists essentially in being seen to have your heart in
the right place whilst your head is in the clouds and your hand is in
someone else's pocket.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

No it won't save fuel. What it does is increase radiator output.

What happens overall depends where the room-stat is, if it's in the room
where a radfan is, then that room will warm up sooner and it will stop
calling for heat, so may save gas ... but other rooms may not have
warmed as much during the reduced heating period, so "someone" may then
turn the stat up to warm the other rooms, or insist on radfans for those
rooms too!

On 23/09/2016 14:17, Graeme wrote:

Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey busy
flicking through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing,
containing four or six mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator
and is apparently designed to blow the warm air from the radiator at 90
degrees to the wall, rather than allowing the warmth to rise and heat
the ceiling.

Good idea or snake oil?

Depends what you want to achieve!

If a radiator is undersized for the room it's in, you can increase its
capacity by using forced convection rather than natural convection.

*BUT* if you are to get more heat *out*, you need to put more heat *in*.
This will likely require the system to be re-balanced so that a larger
proportion of the total flow goes through that radiator.

The boiler will need to work harder, and will use more fuel. The fans
will, of course, make a noise and increasing the water flow may cause
pipe noise, depending on whether you're already close to the critical
flow velocity.

I would think long and hard before I bought one of these things.
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On Friday, 23 September 2016 14:17:31 UTC+1, Graeme wrote:

Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey
busy flicking through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing,
containing four or six mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator
and is apparently designed to blow the warm air from the radiator at 90
degrees to the wall, rather than allowing the warmth to rise and heat
the ceiling.

Good idea or snake oil?

I've done exactly that, but using one little PC fan placed under the rad run on IIRC 6v. What it achieves, by increasing the airflow over the rad, is to extract more heat from it. Useful if that's what you need, and you don't want to replace with a bigger rad for some reason. In my case there wasn't space to. The result was a room 2C warmer, just what was wanted.

There was a long running argument with an idiot called Onetap on here, who was incapable of figuring out what it did & how.

If you need a bit more output, great. If not it's simply pointless.

Re noise, I don't know why people think all fans are noisy. It's trivial to make silent fans as long as you don't want much airflow. I've not used the radfan so no clue what the noise level is, if any.


NT

On 9/23/2016 2:17 PM, Graeme wrote:

Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey
busy flicking through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing,
containing four or six mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator
and is apparently designed to blow the warm air from the radiator at 90
degrees to the wall, rather than allowing the warmth to rise and heat
the ceiling.

Good idea or snake oil?

A few years ago I had a radiator which wasn't giving a decent output
because the 10 mm microbore was either kinked or partially blocked with
solder between the floors. As an experiment I lashed up a somewhat
similar system with a couple of PC fans blowing between the two panels
to get some forced convection from the "high output" fins, and it did
seem to improve the room temperature a bit. I subsequently replaced the
microbore with proper 15 mm pipe and the problem went away.

On Friday, 23 September 2016 20:30:41 UTC+1, wrote:
On Friday, 23 September 2016 14:17:31 UTC+1, Graeme wrote:

Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey
busy flicking through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing,
containing four or six mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator
and is apparently designed to blow the warm air from the radiator at 90
degrees to the wall, rather than allowing the warmth to rise and heat
the ceiling.

Good idea or snake oil?

I've done exactly that, but using one little PC fan placed under the rad run on IIRC 6v. What it achieves, by increasing the airflow over the rad, is to extract more heat from it. Useful if that's what you need, and you don't want to replace with a bigger rad for some reason. In my case there wasn't space to. The result was a room 2C warmer, just what was wanted.

There was a long running argument with an idiot called Onetap on here, who was incapable of figuring out what it did & how.

If you need a bit more output, great. If not it's simply pointless.

Re noise, I don't know why people think all fans are noisy. It's trivial to make silent fans as long as you don't want much airflow. I've not used the radfan so no clue what the noise level is, if any.



Quiet fans are less efficient.

"Graeme" wrote in message
...

Don't you just hate the day a new Lakeland catalogue arrives? Wifey busy
flicking through, wondering what else we cannot live without.

Latest brilliant idea is a Radfan, which is a long thin thing, containing
four or six mains powered fans. It sits on top of a radiator and is
apparently designed to blow the warm air from the radiator at 90 degrees
to the wall, rather than allowing the warmth to rise and heat the ceiling.

Good idea

Yes, we have seen fans added to almost all of the traditional
ways of heating which didn't use them in the past until they
started to be come cheap enough to be viable.

or snake oil?

Nope.