Owning your own home

My folks had a plinth heater in their old kitchen and it was a bit of a nightmare. It kept leaking because it was forever being knocked which put pressure on the pipes. Also the fan was noisy and as it got older only got more noisy but was impossible to service.

I've been swapping from storage and panel heaters to IR. Just over one years use.

Heats objects and people rather than the air in any given room

You can feel the warmth from them, the same as standing in front of a window when the suns shining in.

Achieve the requested heating temperature within 30 seconds of being switched on.

Thats very badly worded! The bar heaters exposed elements may get up to working temp. White, image, mirror or glass panels are a few minutes before you start to feel the heat and probably 5-10 minutes for the surface to get as hot as its going to 90deg to 100deg. The room will take however long xxx watts needs to heat it to the requested temp. My bathroom switches on 20mins before morning alarm time.

In some cases, they can provide a second function such as being a mirror, speaker.

We have a glass towel rail (Herschel) in the bathroom. A (Surya) mirror panel to replace the bedroom mirror and NXT picture panels in hallway and living room (Surya). The Herschel seem much better quality, but significantly higher price.

Quiet in operation as there are no moving parts – perfect for bedrooms.

The NXT image panels beep when powering on, so wouldnt be good for a bedroom with an external thermostat. The NXT controller has less programing options than an extenal but works well for the living room switching on and maintaining a temperature for the evening.

Very little maintenance it ever required so you won't have to worry about bleeding or balancing radiators ever again.

Electrical contactors may fail at some point, either in the panel or external thermostat switch.

No need for any pipework which makes the installation much simpler.

Running wires through the wall to an outlet behind the panel is neater than a dangling cable. The Herschel mounting bracket was way easier to get level than the Surya paper template and four screws to hang the panels on... I'm getting a Herschel mirror panel to finish off the kitchen when I can afford it.

Had one for 20 years, used maybe 50 times to my knowledge. It takes the edge off an unusually cold morning in 10 minutes use. My gran used to leave a burner on, very effective just to lift a chill.