Consumer Reports Tests The Amish Heater
You've seen the ads where the hard-working Amish folk are handcrafting miracle space heaters and no doubt scoffed at their absurdity and marveled at their Photoshop skills- but do the darn things work? Consumer Reports investigates in this video.
The ads claim that the "roll-n-glo" heaters slash heating costs. However, heating a room with electricity (and "flames" provided by two 40watt bulbs) costs twice as much as gas. The only way you'll save money is if you turn the heat way down in the rest of the house. "If you're looking for a heating miracle, keep looking, many other heaters will heat small spaces for a lot less money," says Consumer Reports Bob Markovich.
The Amish Heater [Consumer Reports]
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Comments:
Rule #1 of being a Consumerist:
If you see the ad so much that you can probably recite the whole thing by heart, it's most likely a scam.
Um, sure. If you compair it to Gas. But I saw these things selling over the summer. When Oil was WAY up there. So if you look at it from Oils High or close to its high, you would save money.
These are just electric heaters made to look pretty, thats it.
@SonicMan: which is why at the end they say to get a cheaper more effective space electric heater with a temperature gauge.
The Amish people in those ads looked like people they pulled off the street and put Amish styled facial hair on. I didn't know the Amish were into designer jeans and sweat shirts. Didn't most of them used to shun being photographed also or has that kind of died off?
Consumerist people, I know you're owned by Consumer Reports and stuff, but please, keep the Consumer Reports plugs to a minimum please. I know it's a slow news day, but still.
@Bearded Rapper: Id rather see consumer reports plugs than tons of other advertising... atleast this goes in line with what that consumerist is here for. Ofcourse, you are welcome to buy this blog, pay its staff, and not plug anything.
Umm dude, if Consumer Reports shelled out good money for Consumerist, I think they can plug themselves all they want. It's not like Consumer Reports is out there plugging Ford, or GE or whatever, their mission is pretty much in-line with Consumerist.
@Bearded Rapper: Keep it coming- without Consumer Reports who know what would have happened to our beloved Consumerist?! I think they're a great combo!
Even if this was cheaper than other methods of heating a home, you'd have to amortize in the cost of the unit over the time of use (until it fails, etc).
If people were just buying these to heat their homes inexpensively, they'd be making a poor choice as a $30-50 space heater from Home Depot (or anywhere) would instantly lower the heating cost. Again, all assuming that the electric heat is less expensive for the user than gas/oil/fission/etc.
So the only reason to buy this thing is for looks, in which case the only question that need be answered by CR is "will this burn my house down?"
Which is to say nothing of how sleazy those commercials seem -- always made me think they had those Amish people enslaved somehow.
"'Tis a fine barn but 'tis no pool, English."
@Bearded Rapper: i like the posts. keeps me from looking up the best small cars of 2009. the "as seen on tv" article was awesome.
Consumerist: please don't overcompensate and post less CR stuff than you might otherwise.
@Bearded Rapper: Wait. You're complaining about Consumer Reports on a site called Consumerist? Consumer Reports that are of an interest to the consumers that read Consumerist?
I could keep abusing my italics tag, but I think maybe my point has been made.
haha! My mom called me all excited because she thought she discovered the best way for me to save money heating my house in the North East. She (who lives in FL) was talking about these Amish heaters.
@Bearded Rapper: BOO to you. Now we know if that thing works or not. Please go off to a distant corner.
@xtc46: My sentiments exactly. I'd rather have The Consumerist be beholden to Consumer Reports, instead of have the Consumerist gone forever.
I don't understand how you can heat space. If space is mostly a vacuum, then there's no way to heat space because there's nothing there. If you blow hot air into space, then you're not really heating space. You're pumping hot air into space. At which point, the hot air isn't going to stay hot for very long. It's in space.
Sounds like the scammy tip of a very scammy iceberg.
You would have to be a retarded box turtle to fall for the amateurishly photoshopped ads that are flogging these things.
But they ARE a metaphor for a lot of what passes for business acumen these days.The recipe goes like this :
Take trusted imagery from some well known symbol or group (like the Amish or a venerable brand name),source the internals from China,where people work for slave wages because...they are slaves,then write a technically truthful ,but deceptive , advertisement and sell it like all hell until an even cheaper knockoff kills the market and then blithely go out of business a lot richer than you went in.
Have I missed a step ? All we need now is to have Billy Mays start hawking these things.
I saw the tv ads and pretty much figured that the Amish were building the WOOD part to surround some Chinese made electric heater...
@Bearded Rapper: You must be silly to think that some how consumer reports is bad.
I mean you would rather what? a for profit company own a consumerist site where we can go for information and bitching about lack of consumer rights?
yes brilliant.
/s
@popomaticjeff: Ugh... Your mom shouldn't be allowed to own a TV.
You might want to ask her if she's sending any big checks to African royalty.
@Snarkysnake: buuut ii liiiikkee aaammmiisssh spaaace heeaaterssss. thheeyy maaake myy sheeeelll toooaassstyyyy.
@Bearded Rapper: What is your major malfunction? This content is great, it serves to inform the CONSUMERS who read the CONSUMERist.
@Snarkysnake: I wouldn't say that the Chinese work for "slave wages" as the very notion of that statement is an oxymoron.
The dollar to the Chinese equivalent exchange is high we scoff at them living on say 20 dollars a year (American) as impossible, but to them its a good earning.
Some would argue that America has just as much slave labor between prison workers and illegal immigrants.
Next needs to be the shamwow!
can you get CR to do a report on the shamwow?
@Bearded Rapper: Apparently many Consumerist posters prefer rants and baseless opinion over CR research-based conclusions.
Prison workers in America have been convicted in an open court of law.They enjoy the presumption of innocence until convicted by a jury that their attorney helps pick. The Chinese enjoy no such protection. Work in prison is a privelege,it occupies time in a constructive manner as opposed to being sodomized 18 hours a day. I know lots of prisoners (I'm a bail bondsman). They say that it keeps you from going insane with inactivity.
Immigrants wages are not being held down by men with guns and military tactics.They could go legal, get a SSN and be covered by minimum wage laws and worker protection acts. Most choose not to. Their loss.
@SonicMan:
Cute, but bohemian is right. Most Amish will avoid being photographed. If you look, you will notice that most photographs of adult Amish are from a distance or from behind.
Most believe it violates the commandment about graven images.
@Bearded Rapper: Just adding myself to the chorus -- I've been enjoying the CR material. Especially this article, because you know we've all been wondering about these Amish "Miracle" heaters.
@Snarkysnake: The sad, and frustrating, thing is that there are still enough suckers out there that someone's making tons of money on this crap. Whoever came up with this scam will rake in a ton of money in a few months, even if by next season everyone will figure out that at best, his product is a vastly overpriced space heater, and it'll stop selling like hotcakes. But meantime, whoever put this deal together got himself a nice fat bank account to tide him over till he figures out his next barely-legal scam.
The saddest thing of all, of course, is that it's not me. Damn those pesky ethics, always getting in the way of my making a fortune with sketchy schemes.
@SunnyLea: LOL. this. As long as the stories are fun, and applicable, I don't mind if they're included either.
@Bearded Rapper: Going in with everyone else and saying the same thing as andrewwied for the most part.
"I like the content. I welcome more CR inclusion."
I would add that this includes this particular article and the one about tv products. I love knowing if this stuff that is peddled late at night actually works.
OMG! That exclamation is an on-going joke at my house between my husband and my son! "You're gonna luv my nuts!" He he he!!!
@bohemian: yeah the Amish on the commercial are the most laid back Amish in the world, if they are true Amish.
Have you ever seen an Amish person using an electric space heater? The entire concept is unbelievable from the start!
If it involved a miracle ventless technology for burning manure, then I'd at least think it might be plausible and do further research.
@econobiker: Yep. I think they've even amended the ads somewhat in an attempt to make this more clear. The heater itself is Chinese-made. The wood mantels are (supposedly) made by the Amish. But since Americans associate Amish-made products with quality, and Chinese products with shoddiness, they've shrewdly marketed the entire unit as being "Amish-made."
@Snarkysnake: I suspect many of them would go legal if they could afford to and had access to the system. I know someone who immigrated legally, and it was a multi-year process that required hiring a lawyer at considerable expense. U.S. immigration laws are some of the most complicated in the world, and the INS is hopelessly understaffed and underfunded. At one point they lost his paperwork and told him the only way he could continue the process was to file a FOIA request for his own records.
My theory is politicians don't see any political benefit in making an agency run correctly that only deals with people who cannot vote.
What do you bet the mantle isn't made by true amish people anyway?
@SonicMan:
Just so you know, when they say gas, they're not talking about gasoline. They're talking about natural gas. A lot of people confuse the two. The price of natural gas is not directly determined by the price of crude oil, although it is somewhat influenced by it because the two are interchangeable in some industrial heating systems.
I'm not convinced that you can save any money this way. Heating with electricity is WAY more expensive than natural gas. Consider this: a significant portion of electricity in the U.S. is generated with natural gas -- maybe 15-20%. Assume your power comes from a combined cycle plant (which are the most thermally efficient); about 60% of the energy is turned into electricity. Your electric heater is about 98% efficient, but let's just leave it at 60%. A condensing natural gas furnace, on the other hand, is as much as 92% efficient (I'm going from memory here; might be a little off). And we're not even considering electrical line losses, cost of plant maintenance, etc, which make electric heaters just plain more expensive.
What would be a much wiser thing to do is if you have a forced air heating system (most modern homes or modernized older homes do) is to close off unused rooms and shut the vents to those rooms off (or greatly reduce the air flow) from your heating system. Now you're using the cheaper fuel and not heating unused rooms so much. In my parents' house, this results in a couple of lightly-used rooms being about 55 degrees in the winter and keeps the heating bills down. Plus you don't have to spend several hundred dollars on one of these "Amish" heating things.
@Bearded Rapper:
I appreciate these CR reviews of products hawked on TV. I say keep 'em coming as long as they are informative and interesting.
But...but...but the Amish never lie!