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.
Couple of quick comments:
Someone said, “it doesn’t save any more money than a regular space heater.”
That’s because IT IS a regular space heater.
As for Amish … Amish squamish … who the hell cares? I have nothing against them or any other group of people, but the implied “value” or “quality” because it’s Amish is hogwash to begin with.
Also, just like virtually every other product, if it really is “all that,” then the proprieters would be doing nothing but shooting themselves in the foot to not sell their product at the likes of WalMart, Target, etc… There’s a reason you won’t find these heaters at such places, and it has nothing to do with the smelly people who wear funny looking hats.
Finally, it’s somewhat ironic that if they would get rid of the absurd advertising budget that they obviously have, they could sell their product for what it is at a reasonable price. It’s a friggin’ space heater with a fairly nice wooden housing. That is worth something. And yes, it comes on wheels and that too is worth something. And for certain people the feux-fire appearance is somewhat comforting and that too is worth something — just nowhere near $300 bucks each!
I was informed yesternite I was getting.e
This heater for christmas, I live in a rv, I have a 39$ heater from walmart that I have to turn to low _600w and its been a cold fall this year. Ii have informed my friend to cancel the purchase and buy me a wallet. Its Been unseasonably cold here this fall, and I think ill use the money to help the homeless. I guess if you want to pick
Pick
Presents for your buddies they can appreciate and enjoy. I got her a kreug coffee. Though if you get your buddy a present and your willing to blow 400 bones you should talk to. Him, 30 bucks might be a well thought gift. I got a killer cigar box and a lock for 6 bucks and filled it with cool survival gear for a combat ranger 6yr old,leatherman, flint starter,compass,headlite,flshlite, laser flashlite,and referee. Whistle for less than 40 bucks. He will remember uncle rob.
We received one of these as a gift. We didn’t have a place for it to set up immediatly so we had to set it aside for a year. When we did open it up and set it up, there were problems.
1) Small problem. One of the two light bulbs that illuminate the fire was not in it’s socket. It was just laying in the compartment where the two bulb sockets reside.
2) Medium problem. The firepalce didn’t come with any instructions. I had to hunt down a .pdf file at their web site. It was by looking through the instructions that I discovered that the lower front plate of the fireplace was removable. I thought the fire looked a little dim and when I removed the plate, I found the second bulb not in it’s socket.
3) Biggest problem. The remote control that came with the fireplace doesn’t work. I tried several sets of batteries and turned them this way and that. It doesn’t work. I tried to contact the company via e-mail and didn’t get any useful response just an auto-reply telling me that they received my e-mail.
Overall, I haven’t been impressed and I wouldn’t recommend anyone buy one of their products.