These should definitely be double-boxed, IMO. Mine came in one piece no problem, though. And after mounting it’s been happily heating the bathroom this winter season without a hitch, giving me a decent experiment in minimalism. I wouldn’t say it quite meets my needs. But in more temperate climates, it’d be great, and the small footprint is terrific in tight quarters.
I would caution folks, too, with their expectations. If you live in a place like NY, and are planning to place this in a room with poorly insulated exterior wall…it’s gonna suck. My bathroom is all of 50sqft with 64sqft of uninsulated brick exterior wall. The 400W spec by itself is not powerful enough to heat my bathroom past 69F unless it’s only modestly cold outside (say, in the high 40F’s), no matter how high you have the thermostat set (I’ve the version with a built-in thermostat). The thermodynamics that they hope to achieve is also a bit oversimplified, too, unless you’re talking about, say, a basement space where the walls are actually pretty well insulated from air outside. In a space that features an exterior wall, the dynamics you actually end up with will feature this small heat source generating an small upflow of heat against a relatively huge downwash of cold air from the heat dissipation that the rest of the wall experiences…so a much more mixed result of “air circulation,” even after it’s achieved a balance of thermal mass with the wall.
Also, for those who hope to attach this to a timer and achieve big swings in temperature throughout the day…temper your expectations. At 400W, you will be unsuccessful in moving the mark much over the course of a few hours. All you will do is give up the thermal mass it’s built up in the adjacent wall. If your ambition is to have the room’s temp drop down a couple of degrees at night…midday, and warm up when you need it, this is not the product for you. You need power to pull the temperature swings around like that. 900W, 1200W, 1500W…those specs will help alot if your ambition is to swing your temperatures all over the place. This spec is designed to be low power persistent heat, creating a wall of thermal mass that deals with moderate thermal needs.
Mounting the supports is also something of an exercise in drilling precision. If you get it wrong, you’re going to put tensile stress on ceramic. Does ceramic stand up to tensile stress at all? No. And their approach of giving you a styrofoam template to mark mounting locations leaves, IMO, WAY too much margin for error for a the standard (ignorant) consumer to get right. So I’m not surprised there’re tons of reports of cracked heaters. If you drill 4 mounting holes all at once, and they’re off by a few mm…you’re asking for trouble, and it doesn’t feel like your fault because you’re following instructions. but it makes a difference. My recommendation is to make your own drilling template using something that won’t flex, like the cardboard that it came in, and tap your hole before you drill it, so you’re pretty darn sure it’s not slipping sideways any. You’ll benefit from the precision.
It is a neat experiment in minimalism though. And I love it’s form factor…very unobtrusive…can be painted. For my needs, I’d seriously want to double the spec…perhaps double the surface area (buy two??) to deal with my northeastern US winters.
![[Preview 1]](http://d3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.net/9da93b09-355b-462f-b95c-705d71bfabfa.jpg){kind=link}
![[Preview 2]](http://d3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.net/c0fc75a6-5fc8-40b4-b1d9-5c18cfeb1ab5.jpg){kind=link}
![[Preview 3]](http://d3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.net/b6172daf-e4f9-4500-86a6-edb30f8e9e25.jpg){kind=link}
![[Preview 4]](http://d3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.net/24c839e9-f7ce-44d0-aa74-99f1ad0b1167.png){kind=link}
![[Preview 5]](http://d3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.net/51cd1777-48ac-4515-a8c8-d28c2dd3fd99.png){kind=link}
