9.1. Not Enough Heat

Customer says heater is not warm enough to the touch. Customer is comparing their Quantum or Slimline heater to their older night storage heaters in some cases.

Cause :

Increased insulation in newer heaters results in a lower surface temperature at times.

Compared to the old XL storage heaters, Quantum still loses some heat through case leakage, but it is reduced significantly.

Cause :

Temperature set too low compared to room temperature. If the room is 23C & the heater is set to 21C, the heater will not take much charge as it has little work to do.

Remedy:

 Turn the set temperature up higher than the room temperature!

Cause :

Customer using Out All Day or has altered the User Timer / Home All Day timer to reduce the number of hours of “Comfort On” time (which reduces charge time). 

Remedy :

Factory Reset and then select “User Timer” on Slimline or “Home All Day” on a Quantum as that should give enough heat to last the day.

Cause :

Another heat source present in the room – this could be another storage heater or an electric fire / open fire / log burner / solar gain (think hot conservatory or large window area). 

Remedy:

 Set the heater to Slave mode.

Cause :

Heater has more than 420 mins in line B report screen (suggesting the heater is wanting to take more than 7 hours charge) and the room is still not warm enough.  

Remedy:

Check that If >420 mins on line B of report is seen, heater may be undersized for the room size and a heating calculation carried out to assess how big a heater may be needed.
https://www.dimplex.co.uk/room-heating-calculator

Cause :

Customer is turning the heater down before going to bed ie; 16C, causing the heater to believe that tomorrow it only needs to get the room to 16C, so it will reduce the charge it needs to take to maintain 16C.

Remedy:

Check on report screen, Line E. First number is the current set point temperature, the 2nd number (highlighted) is the set point used last night at midnight.
If heater is being turned down before bed, explain to the customer that the heater is designed to be “set and forget”. It is likely the core is almost exhausted by the evening in most cases, so turning the heater down is unnecessary.

Cause :

Element failed or Charge controller failed? Unusual, but it can be ruled out.

Storage Element - per element
Quantum & Slimline Sizes	Ohms (approx)
50	169
70	108
100	71
125	61
150	50

Remedy:

To test elements: - Perform safe isolation of both peak & off peak supplies.

Disconnect one spade terminal from one element, place multimeter in resistance mode across terminals of element. Resistance as per table. Open circuit = failed element (very rare!!). Repeat test for other two elements in turn. Don’t forget to replace spades.

To test charge controller is powering elements correctly:

 - Set heater clock to 23:58. Ensure heater is set to either Home All Day (Quantum) or User Timer (Slimline) and turn thermostat to 26C.

 - Ensure you can simulate an off-peak supply via fly lead or jumper wires.

 - Heater should draw a current via off-peak once clock has rolled over 00:00

 - Check current drawn is to spec (see wattage table on front of install manual)

 - If it refuses due to a warm core, try setting Extra Charge to 7 hrs as a test then repeat.

Cause:

Heater thinks the room is warmer than it actually is.

Remedy:

Check on the report screen what the heater believes is the room temperature vs a thermometer at skirting board level next to heater.

This is the first number on Line C on report screen.

Check room thermistor is in correct position on Quantum.

If still not reading correctly, try changing room thermistor first, then if that fails, change CC PCB.

On Slimline, the thermistor is part of the Charge Controller plastic assembly, so the whole CC is changed if room temperature measurement is totally misreading.

If the room temperature is only slightly adrift (Slimline Only), it can be corrected in software by using the “Rm Temp Offset” option in Service Menu