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.
I work for an electric company and when I was flipping through the channels this morning I ran across this commerical and decided to research it a little. This is a total scam and anyone that states their bills have not gone up at all normally has electric heat. Space heaters which is exactly what this is cleverly disguised as a fireplace will definately cause your bills to go up. They state they are free and there is a limit of 2 — They are not free they are extremely expensive to buy and to run,.
Thanks for the post and everyone’s follow up comments. If the mantle is in fact a woodwork created by the Amish, this company counting on the fact that the Amish people will never know that they are using “the Amish” to represent their product. They should at least put a disclaimer that the Amish people in the commercial are actors and NOT real Amish people. My first question was, “how does it work?” The Amish do not use electricity. I listened more closely and found that the “Amish crafted mantle” part was specified. This product is basically a glorified plug-in electric heater in the shape of a fire place.
This product is clearly shipped from China based on the box it comes in and should not be represented as made in the USA by a testimonial from an unsuspecting buyer if ONLY PART OF IT is made in the USA (if in fact this is even true). A message to “HeatSurge.com” staff: Calling this product an “Amish Heat Surge” first of all is incorrect, and second, statement of this product being made in the “heartland of America” is insulting to people who try to buy American made products.
I called the phone number on the tv. and the woman who answered the phone was pretending to be Amish…..lol I asked her if she could tell me hgow much it would cost to run a month, and she said she didn’t know. I then asked her if it had the engery star that means its energy efficent and she said no,but it has a good housekeeping seal?????? so does my loaf of stale wonder bread…whats that got to do with heat………and cost to heat. Junk.junk buy a heater at walmart for for $20 and get the same or better results.