LHZ Heaters vs Heat Pumps
Filed under Choosing a heating appliance, Space Heating.
June 22nd, 2009
Hi there,
We are deciding what type of heating to get in our home. We have had several people try to sell us various heating methods. One that stood out to us was that apparently there is a new type of heating called LHZ heaters. Apparently they are 3 time cheaper to run than heat pumps and produce the same amount of heat as heat pumps. Are you able to help confirm if these types of statements are indeed true? Are LHZ heaters going to be the new trend that will replace heat pumps in efficiency?
22 Comments
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Michelle, July 14th, 2009 on 9:18 am
Hi there. we bought these heaters and had them installed earlier in the year and have had many ongoing problems reagrding programming and power usuage. I do not believe that they are as energy efficient as we were lead to believe. The master controller does not work for different temps in each room, it just either turns them on and off as a timer, or on a temperature basis. If I could turn back the clock, I would go with the heat pump option which is what I wanted in the first place, but was wooed by some fast talking sales people
Dave Thomas, July 16th, 2009 on 4:56 am
Hi,was thinking of getting one of these heaters(but as Michelle stated there are some some talking sales people out there) but first would like to talk to some people who have installed them. As it seems , the way they say they work which is not always the way they work, they should be great. If someone like Michele is interested in contacting us it would be great , we are in hamilton, you can submit my email.Its alot of money to outlay for these heaters so we want to get it right Dave and Joanne.
Michelle, July 18th, 2009 on 8:56 am
This is advice from Consumer NZ …….
We have not tested LHZ heaters, but from the HRV website, they appear to be very similar to the old-style night-store heaters that were popular many years ago.
This type of heating is useful for providing a level of background comfort warmth – the main attraction of night store heaters was that they were connected up to low cost night rate electricity. Hence they had low running costs.
If these LHZ heaters are connected to the normal household supply we think they would have similar running costs to an oil-column heater.
All electric heaters (other than heat pumps) are 100% efficient and have similar running costs. They do vary however in how effectively they heat a room – how well they distribute heat around the room. Unless there is some means of stirring up the air (eg a fan – or people moving about), most convector heaters such as the LHZ tend to layer the air, warmest at the ceiling.
Michelle, July 20th, 2009 on 1:15 am
Hi Dave, no e-mail address has come up, but I though I would update you. I have decided to cancel my contract, and will probably be out of pocket about a thousand dollars, but for the peace of mind and the possible ongoing power accounts being so high, we have decided that its worth it for a bit of short term pain. The heaters are not very economical as they cannot be wired to night rate, so my June power account came in at about $600 so not keen on any repititions. We also have a log burner, which costs on average $100 a month for wood during winter. HRV state in their advertising for HRV’s that radiator heating would cost about $200 a month to run, based on the number of heaters we bought, and running about 8 hours a day. Unfortunatley that is not the sales pitch they used when they came to assess my requirements. The heaters are cheaper to run than fan heaters, but lets face it we don’t use fan heaters to heat a standard home, let alone an 80 year old christchurch weatherboard villa. The consumer response lead me to believe that a heat pump would be better suited to our home. Good luck with your decision
Gordon Hampson, August 17th, 2009 on 10:53 pm
Heat pumps are efficient until the temperature gets around 3C when they rapidly loose efficiency, overseas heat pumps extracting heat from the ground instead of the air are used in climates similar to Chch or colder. Something to consider?
Sarah Yeates, August 28th, 2009 on 2:55 am
Hi Michelle, we are planning a new build and had a ‘fast talking’ sales rep who made these sound ideal for our home. We haven’t signed up to anything yet but were pretty impressed by these heaters. My bubble has burst hearing you first hand experience. Can you please email me on yeates . family @ slingshot . co . nz and we can talk further?
Kind Regards
Sarah Yeates
Rollestonsheree, January 20th, 2010 on 7:16 am
HI there
Here is a different perspective and it does depend on the lay out of your hokes. We are a backpackers with our rooms not connected and we looked at a heatpump for each room but the prices were way too high and we have put LHZ heaters in 5 of out rooms and have just purchased 5 more varying sizes for various room types. They have been in for 8 months now and they heat our rooms nicely. We have all of our heaters on commercial rimers and they only run for 45 minutes when the button is pushed and the heat continues for some time. Some of our workers go to work at 7am and i cleaned the rooms at 9am and the rooms were very warm in the middle of June when it was about 3 degrees here. Please remember however these rooms are not open plan and the doors of each room are shut. In these circumstances they work very well. However as far as the power bills goes still unsure as only changed 5 rooms out of 16 an
md it will be hard to measure until all the rooms are done, the rest of the rooms will have the new heaters in by April this year and then we can measure the power usage. Please also note the best efficiency for these heaters as the directions state is to have them under a window or near the door. We also have a heat pump in the main lodge which is very high ceiling and stairwells and can only push the heat to a certain part of the room as high ceilings have a lot of heating space and we have the biggest Fijitsu you can get. if I had my cahnce again and it was only a house I wouls get a heat pump for the mian living area nad an LHZ heater for each bedroom Hope this helpsJeni, January 22nd, 2010 on 1:23 am
Hi, we installed a 2.4 kw LHZ in our 50′s summerhill stone house (Christchurch, Shirley) about a year ago. It replaced the night store in the hallway. We found it to be brilliant, much warmer than the old nightstore but expensive to run. We got the HRV salesman back in to investigate and it turned out we were trying to heat to much area with the one heater. Which meant it never switched off and utlized the heat sink bit, so basically just constantly running. We then purchased another 2.4kw for the lounge/dining area. Since then our house is toasty warm and the heaters are running properly. Our power bills are quite a bit lower now, even after adding the 2nd heater. Our house has only insulation in the roof and underneath and has wooden polished floors and wooden windows so pretty ineficient. Saying that we find the 2 LHZ’s are good! We were then sold a heatpump for the lounge/dining area. We bought it mainly for cooling and purchased a 6 star Fujitsu. As a test we ran it in the lounge area instead of the LHZ and our bills went up!!!! After talking to heating people, apparantly Heat Pumps dont work so well when it’s frosty outside, etc. So this 300% efficiency rating apparantly only applies when warm outside!!! I think I’ll stick with my LHZ’s thankyou. Heatpump works well for cooling tho. Thanks and I hope this helps.
Raewyn, May 15th, 2010 on 9:17 am
Hi there,
Just wanting some advice really… We live in west auckland and have been considering our heating options. We live in a 1920′s cottage with batts in the ceiling and wooden floors with no insulation. We currently have hrv installed so talked to them about our heating options. We usually use oil coloum heaters but the lhz heaters sounded really good, however we also considered heat pumps. We have small rooms with high ceilings and at this point just want to heat our lounge area economically.Bob, May 20th, 2010 on 8:44 am
Hi, We are looking at LHZ’s and were interested to see a report from the UK about a council building replacing their heating system with an LHZ heaters. One thing I would like to share is under floor insulation is a must not the Expol rubbish, we purchased a product called Air-cell from a firm in Wellington called Negawatt. It works very well and has helped reduce the moisture content in the house.
Sue, May 23rd, 2010 on 11:27 pm
Raewyn try Smart Energy Solutions website. Apparss you can get a free home energy assessment.
editor, May 24th, 2010 on 12:15 am
Hi Raewyn,
My advice would be that your existing oil column heaters are probably as good an option as the LHZ heaters or any other kind of ordinary electric heater (ie not a heat pump). However you might want to get your insulation upgraded. The chances are that with a top-up to your ceiling insulation and some new underfloor insulation and possibly a polythene moisture barrier on the ground under your house, that you would be a lot warmer and drier with the same heaters.
You could contact any one of the “Warm Up New Zealand ” partner companies to get an assessment and quote for this.
There is a 33% subsidy on the cost (capped at $1300) for non CSC households or at least a 60% subsidy if the owners or tenants have a CSC. You can go to the Energywise website http://www.energywise.govt.nz for more information or give the Auckland Home Energy Advice Centre a call on 0800 388 588.
Regards, Sarah Free (energy advisor , Wellington HEAC)
Tina, May 27th, 2010 on 3:28 am
I have two LHZ heaters in my house and they are miles better than typical oil column heaters. I’ve also upgraded the insulation to novatherm in the ceiling and aircell under the house.
Will Kelly, May 30th, 2010 on 11:37 pm
Hi there everyone I install and service these heaters on a day to day basis and would like to give my personal opinion from a service side without the “fast talking sales pitch” as you called it… The basic fact is these heaters do work like the old stone store heaters which heat for a period then hold the heat for a period, the idea is that a well insulated house can hold the heat efficiently and stay warmer for longer in these houses we have had great response and great power bills the problem is putting any sort of heater especially electric into a house that cant hold heat is as good as using a heater in the garden, the heat leaving outways the heat produced which is why some have huge powerbills. A heatpump feels more efficient because its blowing warm air at you which feels warmer as long as its always running and always heating. To combat badly insulated houses in new zealand we can now install a thermocouple which limits the amount of power it takes to warm up the plates which can see powerbills drastically reduced but be aware this isnt solving your insulation problems only capping the power consumption like a band aid. long story short these are great heaters that do work also with a great service team and a 12 year guarantee to back them up…INSULATE INSULATE INSULATE.
nzsparky, June 20th, 2010 on 5:36 am
No way around the Law of Conservation of Energy, heat energy output cannot exceed electrical energy input and the electrical energy input cannot just disappear… in other words all electrical resistive heaters are 100% efficient (or extremely close to it).
Jasmina, July 20th, 2010 on 6:14 am
Thanks, sparky. This is another myth on the topic:LHZ heaters do not warm up air, but warm up the objects????!!!!!! Air: animal, vegetable, mineral????? However, none of this gave me an answer to my bipolar house problem- hot in the front, freezing at the back. Cheers, Jasmina.
Phil, July 20th, 2010 on 10:51 am
Just to add to all of this.
Lets assume your winter heating bill peaks at ~$500 for 3 months. So you’ve got maybe $1000 dollars a year to play with. That’s not much.
If the house isn’t insulted you’re heating the neighbourhood, you must insulate FIRST.
Stop the drafts. This product is awesome. http://www.nrl.co.nz/main.php?page=1304#V-Seal I’ve used it on rebated french doors and sash windows by running it up with window runner. Both are terribly leaky it seals them well.
Then you can heat your house. You also need to place the heat on the outside of the rooms to stop the cold coming in. Cold air is denser so will displace hot air if you stop it at the edge of the house (the windows) then the energy used to heat the hose has less work to do. That’s why radiators are placed under the windows. For high stud villas with separate rooms you need to heat each room as heat won’t move easily between rooms. Will you need more than 1 heat pump? That’s expensive.Personally I like radiant heat, so radiators are the best solution. Central heating is too expensive. The LHZ radiators offer a progressive option that you can add to over each year.
Marie, August 6th, 2010 on 12:10 am
We had an HRV unit as well as the LHZ heaters (6 in total) installed in our newly built home in the Wellington region. Fully insulated house. We have one large 2.4kw heater in the living/dining area and smaller heaters in bedrooms. We had an HRV unit in our last (older home) and loved it. Dried out the house and the air in it allowing us to heat our home quickly and more efficiently. The LHZ heaters however were new to us. They are great because they are quiet, safe to touch, are out of the way and are not constantly blowing air on us.
However, we did have a bit of a trial and error to begin with. Not really knowing what to expect in terms of the cost to run we tried different options with the heaters in the first couple of months just to work out which was the most economical and efficient for us.
What we found that worked best for us (and to avoid receiving another frightful power bill again) was to only heat the rooms most needed at any given time and to make use of the remote controlled thermostat to be set somewhere between 18-20 degrees even if it meant having to place the remote in the room that required heating. Word of warning – if your sales rep tells you to leave the heaters on 24hrs (even with the thermostat & HRV unit) – don’t do it!
So, during the weekdays, we only heat the main living area for about 1 hr in the morning if needed and then again in the evenings when we’re home for around 3-5hrs. Then we switch on the bedroom heaters to run during the night for the kids (again only if needed -coughs, sniffles…) which means having to place the remote controlled thermostat in one of the bedrooms (usually the coldest) and all bedroom heaters (that are turned on and set to thermostat) run off the remote. During weekends we only heat the room(s) needed. This works great & our house is toasty.
Its about using them wisely really – unlike a heat pump I guess where my understanding is you can leave them running. If you don’t need the LHZ heaters on – switch them off.
Hope that helps.
Margaret, November 4th, 2010 on 12:12 am
I lived in the USA for many years – snowbelt. The following is the poor man’s double glazing. Works very well. Measure your window width and top to bottom (include trim for tape). Buy inexpensive double faced tape about 1/2″ wide, You can then afford goofups. I bought mine at Arbuckles, $3.00/roll. Go to a garden centre and buy opaque plastic at least the complete width to fit your measurements. I have a small apt. so it was a bit dicey cutting exactly. If you have lot of space all the better to lay it out on a bench or floor. Starting to apply double faced tape on the window frame so that all 4 areas, north,south,east, west are ready. Remove the tape. Take your plastic and carefully attach it to the sticky tape top, side to side all the way down. Take your time. The plastic should be quite tight, not loose. Final step, hair dryer. Turn it on hot, blast plastic from top to bottom but without touching plastic. You should have a tight fit when you are finished. I am elderly but I did one window at the beginning of winter 1mx2m as an experiment, it worked. Next winter all my windows will be done (just need a handyman) and I will have a LHZ or something similar as well. Hope this helps.
Colin., June 11th, 2011 on 9:07 pm
have just installed 2.4kwlhz, has only the controll on side of heater. puts out nice heat for our lounge,set at 3-3.5 turn it down too 2.5 for rest of day and night.our lounge gets too 18-20c.during day house feels warm but not hot.ie not frosty, heater seems to be working ok that is it turns itself off an on. have also installed hrv. was going to go hrv and heatpump but hav gone with lhz. live in dunedin and at night can get too minus in winter so heatpump willl pump out cold wind as i hav had experianced this with heatpumps where i work.so am awaiting first power bill with all this installed watch this space.but am likking my decision so far as puts out nice heat with no noise and does not run cold all of a sudden. hope i dont regret decision.
Dan, August 22nd, 2011 on 11:13 am
I have 2 LHZ heaters, a 2.4 kw in the lounge and a 1.5 in the dining area. I have found running them on timers to be the most effective way. I have set them rel;atively low and just used them to stop overnight temperature drop, they run on average about 8-10 hours per day and the running costs are around $180-$220 per month running this way. I have found independent studies on the net which showed LHZ to be around 30% more efficient to run than oil column heaters of the same size.
The best thing to remember is that these are electric heaters and 2.4kw is 2.4kw no matter what you do. If you dont use them sensibly they’ll cost a lot to run.
I still use a fireplace as primary heat source and wouldn’t try using my LHZ that way.
editor, June 22nd, 2009 on 3:26 am
We currently have very little information on these heaters. Our initial research suggests that LHZ heaters act very much like storage heaters. They have a ceramic core which retains heat and continues to release it even after the heater has stopped using electricity. This is unlike a fan heater which stops heating the moment you turn it off.
LHZ heaters are 100% efficient. i.e. for each unit of electricity you get 1 unit of heat. All electric heaters are 100% efficient, including small electric fan heaters and oil filled electric heaters. On the other hand a heat pump is around 300% efficient i.e for every unit of electricity you get 3 units of heat.
You could run an LHZ heater on a night rate to take advantage of lower running costs; however the initial capital cost is very high (around $1600 for a 2.4kW model), so payback would take a long time. If you were at home all day these heaters (or the traditional night store heaters) might offer some advantages as a main heating source.
The literature suggests that LHZ heaters continue to release heat up to 45 minutes after the heater is turned off. A standard oil filled radiator will also continue to release heat for 15-20 minutes after it is turned off.
LHZ heaters can be linked together in a whole house heating system with a “master controller” allowing different temperatures to be set in different rooms at different times of the day. You could set up a similar system with ordinary oil filled radiators with a $20 timer on each one. A heat pump can also be programmed to come on when you want it.
If you are looking to spend that amount of money, a heat pump might be a better option. The government is currently offering subsidies of $500 on heat pumps (or $1200 if you have a Community Services Card).
If anyone has personal experience of LHZ heaters, we would be interested to hear from you.