Honeywell HZ-709 7 Fin Oil Filled Radiator Heater with Digital Controls
|
List Price: Our Price: $74.99 You Save: $15.00 (17%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $51.49 (click here) Category: Home See more product details |
|---|
Tools and Hardware Reviews of Honeywell HZ-709 7 Fin Oil Filled Radiator Heater with Digital Controls
Customer Review: A Definite Money Saver in the Right Location
Summary: 4 Stars
My wife and I purchased this heater as a way to offset the ever-increasing cost of heating our home. We were pleased to find that this little space heater worked to reduce our gas and electric bill by approximately 30% during the peak winter months, which amounted to about a $100 savings monthly.
We have a 1,700 ft., single-family home that's not very efficient: 6" insulation in the attic, limited attic venting, R11 insulation in the floors, and R19 insulation in the walls. That's pretty bad by today's standards, but not uncommon for 1974. It made little sense to heat the entire house when the two of us are in the family room, or, worse yet, heat the entire home while we're sleeping in the bedroom.
So we purchased this Honeywell oil heater and it was a great decision! The heater allows you to preset three different heat settings. You can program in the exact room temperature you'd like the unit to maintain and it has a standby mode that shuts the heat off when the programmed heat has been reached. There's also an 18-hour timer that can control how long the unit is operational.
The energy consumption for the heater is as follows:
Standby: 55 Watts
Low: 600 Watts
Medium: 900 Watts
High: 1500 Watts
For an average home with eight-foot ceilings, the way you calculate how many Watts of energy you'll need to heat your room is to multiply 10W by the amount of room space. So, for example, if you have a 100 square foot room, that would be 100 sq. ft. x 10 Watts = 1,000 Watts. This heater isn't really designed for rooms over 150 sq. ft. It will work, but the larger the room, the longer it will take to heat it and if it's too large and too cold, it won't be able to maintain a comfortable level of heat.
Our main family room is about 270 sq. ft. In the dead of winter when we get home, if we let the house get into the upper 50s, it takes a couple of hours for this heater to get the room in the upper 60s. We typically use the furnace to get the room up to the mid 60s, then turn the furnace off and use the Honeywell oil heater.
If you have a larger room space you're trying to heat, you may want to consider a 220V baseboard or hydronic baseboard unit, which can deliver much more Wattage that will translate into more heat energy. Oil heaters, like this one, are a great solution for zone heating of smaller room space, but shouldn't be considered for larger areas.
Now to share some experience. We found this heater had the greatest impact in our bedroom. Again, it's a smaller space and it was absolutely perfect for that room. One thing we noticed is this heater dried out the air considerably. So we purchased a humidifier and set it to the recommended 60% level. This does two things: first, it provides needed humidity, which is good for the sinuses and breathing passages; and second, it helps hold the heat in the air. When air gets dry, it's less able to hold heat energy. You remember how heavy the air feels on a hot and humid day? This principle holds true with the air in your room. If you maintain a healthy level of humidity, it assists in maintaining a comfortable level of heat.
Normally, I would have given this product a five-star rating and still feel it's worthy of such, but due to the fact that our heater died after about a year, I have to give it a reduced rating. I have read other reviews from owners who have had problems with the thermostatic control build into this unit, so just be forewarned that you could run into some problems. Save your receipt and be prepared to turn it in for warranty service, if necessary. With us, the unit was running great and we heard a "tick" noise from it and it went dead. We didn't save the receipt, so we purchased a new one. I'm not too upset. In the year we owned it, it paid for itself in money saved many times over.
Had this not occurred, we would definitely have given it a full five stars. Hopefully you'll have better luck than we did.
Customer Review: A complete lemon.
Summary: 1 Stars
I don't know what's going on with this heater. I bought this model last October from Amazon. It had recently come on the market. It worked fine for three months and then started slowly dying. It would shut off after fifteen minutes, then it became ten minutes, and finally after five months or so, it wouldn't stay on for more than a minute. When I went back on Amazon, I saw several other people complaining about the same defect. I called Kaz, the company that makes these Honeywell heaters, and they tried to tell me that the problem was with another version of this heater, and that my model was working fine. Now I find this heater listed on Amazon without any of the negative consumer reviews that it had earlier. Are we to believe this is a newer (supposedly problem-free) version of the old lemon? If so, the company should clearly state so somewhere and recall the old model with full money-back to buyers.Customer Review: A great heater radiator
Summary: 5 Stars
I'll start by saying that I moved to Portland, oregon recently from Phoenix, Arizona...so, my blood is thin from living there for 21 years. I'm not too used to the cold or having to wear layers. I recently moved into a house (renting) that has bad window leaks (see $65 gas bill for 4 days). I was determined to find something of a heater or radiator that I could use. Without doing any reasearch I was just going to buy one that seemed to do the job. I found this radiator NIB at a goodwill near my home on one of my "treasure hunting" days. I was a little apprehensive, but, seeing that the box had not been opened and it had the original reciept attached to the biox, I paid the $25 that goodwill was asking.
30 minutes before going to bed (and an in house temperature of 49 degrees - outside it was snowing), I set it up in my bedroom, which is about 10' x 12', turned it on the middle setting and set to 69 degrees. Within a handful of minutes, my room was very toasty.
I've been extremely happy with this brand, and, knowing that it's a Honeywell, I know it's well made. Had I known just how GOOD this unit was, I would have paid full price for it! So far, I haven't had any problems with the unit and it definitely keeps me warm at night...so much that all I need to wear is a tshirt and shorts and pull under my comforter and NOT layers upon layers of clothes and blankets.
I would reccommend this unit for ANYONE looking to keep their room warm on a cold night...I do not, however, know how well it heats an entire house.
~Dustin.
Customer Review: Absolutely poor engineering - a do not buy recommendation
Summary: 1 Stars
I had purchased the Honeywell HV-709 approximately 8 months ago after being lured into buying the product over others simply because of the Honeywell name. The unit has a digital thermostat, which I believed would make it easier to use for my mother in law. I was grossly mistaken.
Many of the complaints from other 'one star' commenter's are partially misinformed only because they had not carefully read the owner's manual. First, the HV-709 has 3 distinct modes of operation: 1) Low-Med-High static setting, 2) A timer which allows the system to shut off after a number of specified hours, and 3) a thermostat. Modes 1 & 3 are independent and can not be used at the same time. When the heater is first turned on, it defaults to a HIGH on setting; that is the heater turns to its highest power heating setting and remains that way regardless of the room temperature. This is quite an engineering blunder given that most people will simply turn the heater on and assume it has some type of idiot-proof safeguard to cooking itself to death, especially given the highly visible digital thermostat on the front panel. Additionally, if the power should be briefly interrupted (perhaps during a thunderstorm) OR one accidentally brushes the left most switch, the heater will reset itself back to the HIGH setting. NOTE THAT THERE IS NO INDICATION AS TO WHAT MODE THE HV-709 IS OPERATING ON THE FRONT PANEL. The operator is completely blind to assuming that he/she has correctly established their desired mode of operation.
If one is successful at programming the heater to cycle on/off with regards to the thermostat (mode 3), the system seems to run fine albeit the digital thermometer tends to be a few degrees off.
This morning, however, I entered my toddler's room to discover that the HV-709 heater had been generating the horrid odor of melting plastic. I immediately unplugged the unit and extricated the toddler from the room. Twenty-four hours later the room still smells toxic. I moved the HV-709 to a safe area and decided to plug it back in to investigate. Upon turning the unit power ON, I could hear the telltale hiss of an electrical short and smell the cooking insulation in the lower front panel of the heater. I can speculate that the HV-709 had reached an excessive temperature and began to melt a portion of insulation resulting in a progressing electrical short. Conclusion: poor engineering design and substandard quality components.
I am very fortunate to have caught the problem before serious damage/injury resulted, and I highly recommend you avoid this product. It is not worth the risk of property or life.
Customer Review: After a few months of usage it randomly turns itself off
Summary: 1 Stars
It is so unreliable I wouldn't buy it again.
We set a temperature and in theory it should stay on, well, sometimes after a few seconds not having reached the temperature it would turn off. Sometimes it stays on but never for more than 2 hours. Even if we set it such that it should stay on for lets say 8 hours. A total waste of money.