LongRunner's Mini-review Collection DISCUSSION

[Behemot]

and was in rather loose contact (yet still took immense force to unplug)

Isn't that one of those fastons with something like a tiny pin on the receptacle, which is slightly longer so it goes out on the other side of the plug, where you have to push it with a fingernail and only than it can be unplugged? It's some kind of safety lock or something. They often appear to be shaky but actually cannot be unplugged either by using the correct way, or by excessive force

[LongRunner]

Isn't that one of those fastons with something like a tiny pin on the receptacle, which is slightly longer so it goes out on the other side of the plug, where you have to push it with a fingernail and only than it can be unplugged?

I know about those; this isn't one of them, it's just a really inflexible shape.

Anyway, I've posted some micro-reviews for a bit of a breather.

[Behemot]

Yeah I quickly went through those but since it's mostly local australian stuff, nothing for me I guess, I don't think I'll ever come into contact with that stuff

[LongRunner]

Added a second round of micro-reviews.
I also see that Kambrook have a new fan heater model (KFH700, no sign of a KFH710 or KFH760) which appears to have an easier-to-grip switch knob (although silver-painted which I'm sure will wear off and look bad after some use), albeit still operated in the reverse direction. (The KFH6x0 have dropped from their site although you can still find them at retailers.) Should I have cause to buy (or suggest) it (for a friend or whatever as I don't need another heater at home), I'll take note of whatever internal differences may exist.

[LongRunner]

This arrived on Friday evening. The included pair of K-type thermocouples are rated to 250°C continuous/300°C briefly (PFA insulated wire? It's obviously some kind of fluoropolymer) so more than enough for my purposes; the thermometer does support much higher temperature measurements with other, suitably-rated couples. In a freshly-boiled kettle, both temperatures read near enough to 100°C. The difference (T1−T2) mode (which continues displaying T2 itself) is of course ideal for checking temperature delta values (be they for equipment cooling, or the air temperatures on convection heaters or air-conditioners).

It's not a "rugged" unit of course, but feels solid enough for the price. I can't check much of what's inside as one of the PCB mounting screws is covered by a mass of glue steadying the backlight (only illuminated temporarily after each button press, which is less than useful) at the right-hand side; I can just tell that the board is FR-4 with a gold (ENIG I believe is the process) pad finish, the soldering is average, and the surface-mounting pads for the tactile buttons aren't at quite the right pitch so their actual pins sit right at the edge of the pads. The screws into the LCD frame (from the PCB back) appear ever-so-slightly long, with visible stress points in the plastic at their tips. The battery (3 AAA) springs aren't quite straight, although they still make adequate contact.
Overall I give it a C− for build quality.

Every future mini-review (and eventually full review) I make of a convection heater (whether fanned or passive) will include ΔT measurements, naturally.
The Kambrook KFH6x0 for example shows a ΔT at the hottest part of its air-stream of about 62 (K or °C) on full power, and 31 on half (you can interpolate linearly through the rated/measured power settings as long as the fan speed is the same; though passive convectors won't follow this law as their convection currents vary in strength with the heat power). You can simply add this to the room temperature to work out how hot the heater itself gets (polypropylene has an approximate operating maximum of 105°C for what that's worth).
The "ideal" air temperature (for safety and good heat distribution) coming out of a fan heater (like for air-conditioning in heating mode) would be basically lukewarm (40 to 50°C), although somewhat warmer is generally accepted to work with a reasonably small fan (and so the lower settings won't have a chilling effect on people nearby). An Everdure HCC1800TB (a typical enough PTC ceramic fan heater, 1.8kW) easily exceeds 130°C at the front; while I don't have a problem with the concept of the PTC elements, it would help if they didn't keep making those heaters so tiny (the finned heater block measures just 88mm by 96mm). (BTW, its casing including the outlet shroud seems to be ABS and has indeed partly melted in one place. The grille is metal as you can imagine.)
Passive convectors (whether vented-box, oil-filled finned or else) pretty much all run quite hot (around or over 100°C) to keep acceptably compact.

[Behemot]

It almost looks like there's either hot or cold down under How's it with thermal insulation? I have only limited second-hand experience but from that it seems it's mildly better than in UK (where they also started doing something about those paper walls and single windows in the 90s), but often in poor condition (because everything is expensive, especially with that stupid system of reality servicing agencies which use useless but overpriced repairmain services to rip the landlord, which in turn rips the tennant, but because of huge lack of housing especially in some areas, ppl pretty much take everything there is).

Regarding gas heating, not sure what's all available in there but here you can choose from several types of stationary gas heaters, boilers etc., those usually ventilate the flue gasses outside (either through vent or chimney), often combined with hot-water boilers too (which are also available as small ones for individual flats) and there are also portables ones (usually for short-term use, especially industrial, construction etc. for heating and/or drying purposes) fed from small tanks (locally it's usually 2-10 kg propane-butane tanks called "bombs").

Than there is also large selection of solid-fuel burning heaters (coal/coke, wood, wooden pellets etc. or even poor quality grain) and a few liquid burning ones (light or heavy oil, some kinds of tar etc.). These together with gas heating are usually built as water-heating, using water as the medium for radiator heaters. Australia is known large producer of both coil and oil so you should definitelly be able to get those for reasonable price, even though the largest sources are on the west coast with most ppl on the east coast (but there is both water and railroad transportation).

Not sure how common it is, I have the feeling you ppl somehow prefer to only heat sepparate rooms and freeze in the rest. It may not be necessarry for too long during the year but definitelly in appartment buildings (10+ flats) I think that central heating is worth it as the costs are not so high when distributed amongst more tennants. Electricity only makes sense when using combined air-to-air heaters and air conditioners.

Electricity is good for direct heating of very small rooms or as a temporary solution, but other than that, it's the most expensive of all and I don't think this differs much throughout the planet. Only exception is accumulation heaters which usually get special tariff from electricity distributors with remote centralised control to only draw electricity in the times with lower draw from the net, when it is cheaper. As it usually switches the whole flat or house to such, you can use other devices like electric boilers or even washing-machines or dishwashers (pretty much everything with high but short enough power draw) in the low tariff and the total consumption for lower price usually is on par with other types of heating and water heating (and often easier to install and maintain).

[LongRunner]

It almost looks like there's either hot or cold down under How's it with thermal insulation? I have only limited second-hand experience but from that it seems it's mildly better than in UK (where they also started doing something about those paper walls and single windows in the 90s), but often in poor condition (because everything is expensive, especially with that stupid system of reality servicing agencies which use useless but overpriced repairmain services to rip the landlord, which in turn rips the tennant, but because of huge lack of housing especially in some areas, ppl pretty much take everything there is).

As far as I know it's just ceiling insulation in my home, but since it's fairly small to begin with that's not a huge problem.
Albany does get rather colder than most of the rest of Australia, to be fair.

Regarding gas heating, not sure what's all available in there but here you can choose from several types of stationary gas heaters, boilers etc., those usually ventilate the flue gasses outside (either through vent or chimney), often combined with hot-water boilers too (which are also available as small ones for individual flats) and there are also portables ones (usually for short-term use, especially industrial, construction etc. for heating and/or drying purposes) fed from small tanks (locally it's usually 2-10 kg propane-butane tanks called "bombs").

Than there is also large selection of solid-fuel burning heaters (coal/coke, wood, wooden pellets etc. or even poor quality grain) and a few liquid burning ones (light or heavy oil, some kinds of tar etc.). These together with gas heating are usually built as water-heating, using water as the medium for radiator heaters. Australia is known large producer of both coil and oil so you should definitelly be able to get those for reasonable price, even though the largest sources are on the west coast with most ppl on the east coast (but there is both water and railroad transportation).

Not sure how common it is, I have the feeling you ppl somehow prefer to only heat sepparate rooms and freeze in the rest. It may not be necessarry for too long during the year but definitelly in appartment buildings (10+ flats) I think that central heating is worth it as the costs are not so high when distributed amongst more tennants. Electricity only makes sense when using combined air-to-air heaters and air conditioners.

Electricity is good for direct heating of very small rooms or as a temporary solution, but other than that, it's the most expensive of all and I don't think this differs much throughout the planet. Only exception is accumulation heaters which usually get special tariff from electricity distributors with remote centralised control to only draw electricity in the times with lower draw from the net, when it is cheaper. As it usually switches the whole flat or house to such, you can use other devices like electric boilers or even washing-machines or dishwashers (pretty much everything with high but short enough power draw) in the low tariff and the total consumption for lower price usually is on par with other types of heating and water heating (and often easier to install and maintain).

I know basically all of this already (and even made a thread to that effect); I didn't want to get into reviewing heaters myself in the first place, but since no-one else did so properly that I saw, it's come down to me to set a good example. (Since they're way simpler than the likes of SMPS, it can't be that hard to do properly ; just that the mainstream "reviewers" are terminal sufferers of the Dunning—Kruger effect, so even very basic faults evade their notice.)

Since my mother is a well-paid accountant, electricity costs are no big deal for us; time on the other hand is short even on better days, so for her it can be easily worth paying higher running cost for lower maintenance. (See also my note here about reverse-cycle A/C; it's not quite the win-win many believe.)

Right now (around 3AM here) I have this on full power (continuously since the thermostat is maxed out) in the main space of the house; inside temperature is around 18°C with the outdoors around 10°C (although I can't rule out that there may still be heat retained in the house bricks), for what that's worth. (I've used the A/C here before, but lately got a bit sick of the hot and cold spots.)

It also annoys me, the way fan heaters are effectively made into a scapegoat. (Probably why their gas counterparts aren't sold under the "fan heater" name ) It would be quite interesting to see fan-assisted heat exchangers for central heating (basically they'd resemble water-cooling rigs but bigger).

At least we're not like certain Americans who use basically an oversized central fan heater (albeit under the name of "electric furnace"), of course missing the entire point of making heating central…

[LongRunner]

Well, even the thermal fuse from the Euroflex Monster SC3X1 is dodgy. It was meant to cut off at 240°C, but my thermocouple read all the way up to 417.8°C peak (producing smoke, melting part of the PFA thermocouple wire insulation, and even discoloring the silicone insulation on the earth wires) by the time it cut off; here's it compared to a (hopefully) genuine Microtemp (same temperature even; previously ordered from element14, to repair the Sunbeam EM6910 later):

(removed fake is on top; genuine below)

Thermal fuse comparison.jpg (121.59 KiB) Viewed 127800 times

Did they even try?
Perhaps bought through a middleman who tried the well-known tactic of supplying genuine samples, but switching to counterfeits for the actual bulk order.

I've upgraded the recall to High risk and will think about what else I can do (perhaps try to notify Therm-O-Disc, maybe even mail it off if they'll cooperate; and if their communication fails then that's their problem)…

EDIT: Looking at the Microtemp documents again, this one does appear to match the style shown there (perhaps they changed it recently).
That still doesn't rule out the possibility of counterfeiting, though.

But yeah, you can hardly trust anything these days. Red Dwarf is more relatable than ever (quoting from Demons & Angels):

Lister: The whole ship's full of fail-safes anyway. Coolant systems, containment panels, vacuum shields. The actual chances of it blowing are about one in…
(Red Dwarf explodes)
Lister: …one.

Anyhow: Stick with established reputable brands where you can (even if you have to buy used), otherwise inspect for yourself.
And whatever you do, don't rely on the consumer magazines…

Further update: A batch of 10 of the smaller Microtemp G7F (rated for up to 5A loading) are still printed in the old style, but the print is much clearer than this.
This seems to affirm my suspicion (and is probably indeed why Microtemp changed to etched text on the regular-size models).

I don't have my Kambrook KFH660 to hand, but its old-style Microtemp G4A also appears to have clearer printing in what part I can see from the photo.
Their newer KHP120 (which won't be mine for much longer, as we're moving to a nicer house with twin kitchens each containing a gas stove; so I'll leave it behind so the buyer of our old house at least has something to cook on) contains the new-style G4As.

[Behemot]

Since I'm currently dealing with this thing for my new "flat" which is in process of the paper work, do you also have low and high tariff for electricity? It appears there is something like that, called "peak" and "off peak".

Maybe worth geting some kind of accumulation furnace? That kind which heats fire-clay bricks to high temperatures during "off peak" and than you can take the heat during the whole day with thermocontrolled fan. Here once you have such device, you are often a winner cause you can have up to 16 hours a day for "off peak" tariff, and households usually switch the whole installation to this tariff so you run everything else on the cheaper electricity during said time.

I'll definitelly also put electric boiler (for hot watter) and washing-machine so it is only switched on during "off peak".

[LongRunner]

Maybe worth geting some kind of accumulation furnace? That kind which heats fire-clay bricks to high temperatures during "off peak" and than you can take the heat during the whole day with thermocontrolled fan. Here once you have such device, you are often a winner cause you can have up to 16 hours a day for "off peak" tariff, and households usually switch the whole installation to this tariff so you run everything else on the cheaper electricity during said time.

Well, since I most need heating when I'm up at night (such as now ), it may be feasible to exploit off-peak rates even with direct heating
I'll see what Mum thinks…

By the way, the HTTPS certificate for the main site has expired, better renew that quickly