About 4 years ago, shortly after the Georgia Public Service Commission completely abdicated their responsibilities and threw Georgia consumers to the Natural Gas provider “wolves”, I invested in a bunch of electric heaters to use as part of a “zoned” scheme to keep my house comfortable (heat only the bedroom area in the evening and morning, heat only the TV room when we were watching TV, etc.).
One of those heaters was the Honeywell HZ519 Baseboard Heater which has served us very well until this past year.
It still heats the area well and its thermostat works fine, but it’s taking to making REALLY odd noises as it heats up and cools down.
I swear it’s like listening to outtakes from Star Wars’ SPFX folks when they were testing audio sounds for the epic series.
I’m just curious if anybody else has encountered this. I’ve picked up the unit, shook it to see if anything is loose, checked to see if there was dust in it (used a compressed air can to blow out the vents) and can find nothing unusual save for the bizarre noises.
As an aside, the average life for Rotary heaters’ rotary apparatus, under regular (daily in the winter) use, seems to be just over two years. This as evidenced by my two Honeywell rotary heaters and my Holmes Twin Ceramic rotary heater. The heating elements continue to work just fine but those rotary components are certainly not meant to last a lifetime.
Our house is all electic heating with baseboard heaters, and in Brampton (Toronto) they are used a LOT more than yours would get used in Atlanta. Counting in my head, we have 15 such heaters in this house, ALL of them original equipment with this house (1967 ) so over 40 years old.
The ONLY maintenance we have performed is a quick vacum for dust each fall. They make a slight “ping” sound if the room is quite cool when they are first turned on, but nothing that would disturb anyone.
I was just thinking the other day, that when comparing electic heat to ‘fossil fuel’ heatting they never mention that a furnace usually needs replacing every 20 year, and the annual maintenance.
King
I had electric heaters in every room when I lived in Georgetown, back then I think electric was more expensive than forced air. I think, if done right – programmable thermostats, it could make the house VERY comfortable. Unfortunately my dad was very much of the “18 degrees ought to be enough for anybody” mindset so ours wasn’t all that comfortable!
Here in Georgia, because Natural Gas is so obscenely priced, electric is the way to go for the foreseeable future. But it does bother me to use such high-order energy (electric vs. gas) when I KNOW that the actual energy consumption per unit heating must be greater. Ah, gotta love those markets.
I do recall the occasional click or ping too. That’s why I was so surprised by my rather enthusiastic portable baseboard heater. Especially where it was so silent for the previous 3 1/2 years. It must have been dropped or something and is now an entertainment center unto itself these days. 🙂