Heaters for Garden Room

"Garden Room Installation

I bought 2 x Pion 700W Thermo Glass Crystal transparent panels to heat a garden room of approx 3m x 2.5m x 2.25m, plus a "Netmostat N-1" thermostat for added control.

Before purchase, the helpful guys at the Infrared Heating Company advised that, for a room of this size (with concrete base and single-skin wooden walls), depending on usage I might be OK with a 1kW panel, but that 1.4kW would certainly be enough. Given the layout and roof beam structure, I decided to go with the 2x700W arrangement, which fitted well. The previous owners had used this as a "home office" but our usage is expected to be more occasional, albeit we want to ensure that the room remains dry and frost-protected. Hence the addition of a thermostat. NB if you just want to use these panels "on demand", then a simple mains connection with a switch will suffice. I decided to cannibalise the existing light fitting power supply and connected the panels in parallel, which works well. (I'll fit separate new lighting in due course...) 

In use the panels are very good. They take a few minutes to warm up fully (and perhaps even longer to cool down when switched off) but in operation they are very effective and provide good heating throughout the room. The appearance is also elegant and discreet. Obviously one needs the headroom such that there is no risk of touching them when hot, but the cables provided allow a lot of flexibility in the mounting, and they feel *very* secure. The power cables could be longer - they also come with some rather neat cable connectors but given that I was hanging them quite high, I was hoping to wire both panels straight into the light socket, which worked with one but I needed the connector for the second; 

The Netmostat (and accompanying iPhone App) were more tricky to set up and, frankly, not as functional as expected. We have a HIVE system for the main house and the Netmostat would be a poor comparison if this were our main system. However, for this relatively simple setup, it suffices. I have a simple one-timezone approach which is set to keep the room above 10 degrees at all times (in order that we can over-winter plants and prevent damp and frost). When actually in the room and in need of more, I switch it to manual and select a target temperature in the 20s - and then back to programme control when I leave. There is a third "eco" mode which I never use. The whole thing is "downstream" of what used to be the light switch, so the latter now acts as a master "off switch" should I need it. The impression given is that the App provides much more control than the device itself, but I didn't find this - hopefully the App will get better over time. 

 However, with a Netmostat ID and appropriate configuration, I can now monitor the room temperature from anywhere with the iPhone App, and turn the system on and off. I could change the temperature also but I don't need that. So it's "OK".