I saw a two-page ad in the Rocky Mountain News this week about some new miracle heater called the ‘Amish Heat Surge‘ and it fell into the category of things that sounded to me to be ‘just a little fishy’. Later I saw a commercial for the same product. Sure enough, after doing some calculations, I figured out that this is just a scam to overcharge people for a cheap electric heater made in China. Searching the Internet, I found a few unhappy customers who fell for it. Even though the heaters are ‘free’, you pay $298 for the ‘Amish authentic wood mantles’ that enclose them. In reality, there’s no reason to wrap an electric heater with a wooden box or mantle. It also has some sort of fake fire effect. Oh, and shipping costs $50 EACH. And they’ll stick you with an extended warranty for $28 each. So for around $770, you’d get a pair of heaters that do the same thing as a pair of $27 electric heaters you can pick up at Wal-Mart.
A 5,119 BTU/hr heater generates about 1/20th the heat produced by a household furnace. It will draw 1.5 kW. For every hour this thing runs, it will cost about $.15 in electricity, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but over a 730 hour month, that adds up to an extra $108 on your electric bill. Electric resistive heat is the most expensive way to heat a house. It costs about twice as much per BTU as natural gas heat. Just to put it in another perspective, a 2,100 sq. ft. house in my home state of Colorado uses about 6 therms of natural gas a day in the coldest winter months. At the current gas price of $1.20 per therm, a typical gas bill is $216/month during the winter months. To heat your house to the same temperature with this electric heater, you’d need to have 5 of these heaters operating at the high setting 24 hours a day. The additional monthly charges on your electric bill for just the heaters would be $540!
The ad talks about only using it to heat zones, which can save on your heating bill, of course, but only at the expense of having some of the rooms in your home being uncomfortably chilly. And you can’t really completely turn off your central furnace without the risk of pipes freezing. In other words, if you put a heater like this in the room that has your furnace’s thermostat, and thus your furnace never comes on, you may freeze pipes in a remote part of the house.
The ad is full of high pressure sales nonsense, such as requiring a special savings code that expires in 48 hours, or you’d otherwise pay $587 each! There is a limit of 2 per household and they need to ‘turn away dealers’ because they can’t keep up with demand.
If you’re one of the people reading this article who bought an Amish Heat Surge heater, please note that I mean no disrespect to you. I’m just tired of con artists using slick advertising to suck people into buying things that aren’t worth a fraction of the sales price.
Lee…your calcs on the electric and gas usage is dead on. I find this all very amusing, though. Mostly the tie in with the Amish. This company is flat out scamming folks. I own a heating and a/c company and we shudder when people tell us they try and save money by using electric heaters. You do not save money.
Once your house is heated to a certain level, it only takes a small amount of heat, in every room, to maintain that level of comfort. You cannot do that with tiny electric heaters. It’s called a balance point. That certain level where the structure is losing more heat than is being produced internally.
This is a good thing you are doing, alerting an unsuspecting public to the shady business practices of Heat Surge. Keep up the good work!
Ok I don’t see what the hate is for I work for a company not affiliated directly with heat surge, that takes the calls generated by the print ads and tv ads, but one thing gets me about the people I talk to, first there are the ones from the print ads that stop reading after they read the word “free” and get pissed when i tell them it costs money, then I politely point them to the section that has the price, and they feel like morons and they should, there is NO such thing as a completely free lunch, and you morons crying that it should be “free” as it says are morons, and besides I want you to think of some things the next time you think it is completely free.
1. A 1-800 number is not free, the phone company charges money for that, the money has to come from somewhere right
and
2. I don’t answer the phone for free either, I have children to feed, so I don’t answer the phone for my health, and due to the increasing amount of morons like yourselves that give me headaches I am seriously thinking of asking for a raise.
So the next time you think that something is completely free, think of this, could you walk into home depot, pick up an electric heater and walk out the door without paying for it, enough said.
This so called Amish heater,has low,medium,high.Which is 600,900,1500 watt settings.No different than a ceramic floor heater,at walmart.Your paying for the wood,and shipping.Don’t fall in the chinease hole for this preety box.In addition the Amish don’t even make these.