Far Infrared Heating: Herschel HS220UD Review and Home Assistant Integration
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ม.ค. 2025
- Curious about Far Infrared (FIR) panel heaters? I'm reviewing the HS220UD panel from Herschel Infrared (@Herschel-Infrared) a 220W under-desk smart heater which can integrate nicely with Home Assistant. Full article here: www.speaktothe...
Herschel Infrared HS220UD: amzn.to/3BcylUZ
Their larger 500 watt version: amzn.to/3VUPjyW
Review of the 500 watt version: • Herschel Infrared 500W...
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just have to love it when one person can overcome an issue that a corporation reckons cannot be done..... Thanks for posting.
Thanks for taking time to do this. The recovery after power cut behaviour is a show stopper for me. We used to have some smart bulbs that did something similar - came on to full intensity after a power outage.
It’s a real shame and should be something that a firmware update would resolve. I think it’s using a generic Tuya heater firmware… but whether there’s a potential fix out there for this I wouldn’t know. My bodge in Home Assistant works pretty reliably though so far.
Thanks for this. I am in the process of re-furbing a bedroom (box room) and visited Herschel and had a great chat with the guy there with a view to replacing wet radiator with an infra red heater. Ceiling mounted. As I am having solar fitted will eventually go fully electric. Boiler is getting old now. Not sure I would go all techi with apps etc though.
We've switched to far infrared heating for all our heating needs this winter (Herschel throughout) and have found they've worked pretty well. The video below goes into efficiency comparison against gas boilers if you're interested (I've done some other videos on the setup / control scheme, home assistant based ;) ):
th-cam.com/video/ht6uQNC3Y6o/w-d-xo.html
I’ll take a look, thanks
We got a set of three IR panels a couple of weeks ago. They seem really fantastic so far. We haven't needed to turn on the central heat yet, and we're more than halfway thru October.
We got a 250 W, 400 W, and 600 W. The smaller two we wall mounted next to desks, and the large one we made legs for and put in front of our wood-burning fireplace. We originally had them on timers/switches, but now have been leaving them on almost 24/7, since it seems they just continue to charge the house like a heat battery throughout the day.
About the beeps, I'm sure you could open up the electronics box and just snip the cable to the chirping bit. That's worked for me with fire alarms in the past haha.
Did you get the Herschel XLS range for wall mounting or did you go for a different brand?
Great video man!!! this is want i am looking for !
Thank you :)
Thanks posting. Though Herschel isn't only one in UK so two flows useful that I don't like. 37 degree is you never need and wasteful. And beep. I am going to power heater with solar panels and portable power bank, so food for thought. Infrared heating with built in LED lighting I may go for. Anyway, those electrical goods not always give us detailed cautions and warnings some DIYers are curious how installation can be done or need electrician then we want all the job done in one go for better price of labour!
I have a lot of experience with IR panels. I have three 960 watt IR heater panels in my living room. Honestly IR panels are not worth the investment especially when dealing with the coldest of British winter. You have to sit really close to an IR panel to 'feel the warmth on any given cold day. A Convector heater of about 2kw - 3kw is the best way to go.
The problem with IR in cold weather (e.g. January in the UK) is any bits of you that aren't in line of heat get cold. Like your back, head or hands above the desk. I can imagine this working in a small well insulated box room though.
Perhaps that could be an issue in larger rooms, yes. It does work amazingly well in my small study and I still have it in here even though I've also got a heat pump now instead of a boiler. It's a nice little boost for the occasions when it gets a bit chilly. I wouldn't want to heat my whole home with them though, way too expensive compared to the heat pump!
A very informative post,thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
For the beeping - just open it up and cut the wire to the small piezo speaker.
Great video. Having had Solar and Battery installed this year I'm keen to tackle the odd cold spot within the house with electric heating. Our study being one.
I'll be buying one later this week. 👍
I've had mine on lots today! Don't forget to use my affiliate link in the video description if you do buy one though ;)
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech It isn't available through that link I'm afraid 😔
I think Herschel Infrared are out of stock of that panel at the moment, looks like they'll have some on the 17th Oct.
I was hoping to hear a bit more about how effective it is as a heater.
What more would you like to know? I thought I'd covered everything. It's a great little under-desk heater in my 2m x 2m small south-facing study, and it was the only source of heating used in there for 2 winters. It can't heat a whole room any larger than that though. Even though I now have a heat pump, I have occasionally turned this on this winter in addition just to save heating my whole home in the middle of the day when there's only me in.
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech Hi, and thanks for getting back to me. I guess that what I am really interested in is why IR heating is more efficient than a radiator-based central heating system. It seems to me that the IR would be great for quickly making a cold area more useable for a short period. Once everything in the room is hot, I'd have thought that you would get exactly the same heat losses as with the radiator system.
I am looking for an efficient way to heat a workshop while I am working.
Technically it is no more efficient than any other direct electric heating, so 100%. However, it's how you use it that matters! If you want to heat a space then IR heating is probably not suitable. If you want to heat just select objects or people in specific places in a room then IR is great because rather than emptying say 3kW into the air of a lossy workshop, you could sit in front of an 800W IR panel. If you're not moving from that same rough spot, you personally wouldn't notice any difference in comfort but you'd have used less energy to achieve that. So you are right, physics is physics but you can optimise where the energy is used.
Using the Smartlife app. The heater will try and reconnect to the router and by loading the app, reset back to your set level.
I just tried reconnecting the heater from TUYA to SmartLife app and couldn't get the "remembered" state to resume. How are you seeing this?
@@MarkCarline After you have added device to Smartlife, you would create a scene and add logic rules. When power goes out and the router resets, the thermostat will try and reconnect. Your Smartlife/mobile/tablet/PC app will also need to reconnect. This can happen without interence unless there is an issue. Smartlife will then send commands as normal that have been set automatically. You can pickup a UPS for around £100. That can have the router kept powered on if you have a power cut that will increase the reconnection speed.
The IF Then logic rules is something you should spend time adding. No programming required. Just add a rule that says IF temperature is or Time is. Any trigger that you would like including motion detecting. And Then action. So turn the device on/off or put set temperature at your level of comfort. Rules can be added for powercut of course and even frost/mold protection within the home. And if you go shopping on a cold day and wish for the heating to be on for when you get home you can use the app to turn on for you to be toasty walking in the door.
Could you not replace the foot button with a Zigbee one to make it work locally (at least for on/off) and it would also remove the problem of it powering back on after a power cut and could replace your IKEA button too?
Yup you totally could do that, but if you’re doing that then there’s not much point in buying a connected panel. You can get standard free standing panels for a lot less money. Combine that with a smart plug, a temperature sensor and an automation in Home Assistant and you’ve got yourself a smart panel. But I would guess that most people buying a panel would just want a single unit that they can control from their phone with minimal hassle
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech You wouldn't be able to control the heat output without Tuya though. I was just thinking swapping the foot button would be a simple swap of only one item, but you're right that if going that route it might be more cost effective to do what you describe.
Thanks a lot for all the info, very useful!
Couldn't the manual foot button play the same role as your smart "I am cold" button ?
What is the advantage of using smart mode (which seems pretty dangerous due to the bug you uncovered) if you never need to turn your heater while you're away ?
Btw, is the beep very loud ? Or are you pretty sensible to noise in general ? I am wondering if I am going to be annoyed by it :p
The foot pedal could sort of play that role, yes. But my smart button turns the heater on for an hour, or extends that for an hour whenever it is pressed, making sure it’s turned off afterwards. With the foot pedal, you’d need to remember to turn it off! I’m not certain the bug is dangerous because the panel doesn’t seem to get hot enough to set anything on fire, and it’s low power too, but it would run your bill up a bit if it was turned on without your knowledge. As for the beep, because I’m right next to the panel it seems loud, but I am very sensitive to noise so perhaps I’m not the best judge of it! I put up with it because overall the panel gives a great heat for a low power in my study.
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech Thanks a lot for your quick replies!
Having found the user manual online, it seems the panel has a "timer mode", so perhaps setting it to 1 hour plus switching it on with the foot pedal would emualte what you're doing with your very fancy automation scripts (which I am a bit intimidated to try, I must admit ! :))
As for the beep, I wonder if there isn't a way to stuff or obstruct the small speaker on the heater with a small piece of tape, or something alike :)
Seems a lot of community centres, village halls etc are going down the ir route using ceiling or wall mounted 3kw panels.
I haven’t actually seen any myself in the wild but they would make a lot of sense for those sorts of venues. Easy to install, very low maintenance!
Useful in certain situations such as small rooms but, being simply a resistive heater, they are not very efficient. Heat pumps are between three and four times as efficient.
I won't dispute that at all, if your home is suitable for a heat pump and you can afford to install one then it's likely to be a lot more efficient. However I currently have a very old non-condensing boiler and work from home in a small study. In my specific situation, putting the boiler on to heat just this room costs a fortune compared to running this little heater.
Does it heat well and what are the room size limitations?
This portable heater isn't designed to heat a room so there's no official room sizing information for it - it's supposed to heat your legs under a desk. Having said that, in my small 2 metre x 2 metre (ish) study, the heater plus my computers keep the room very cosy. When I tried the small panel in my living room it wasn't very effective, but the larger 500W panel is. But, they're both considered supplementary heaters. If you wanted FIR to be your only source of heating in a room, you'd need to get a proper calculation done and the manufacturers will help you with that.
Just to add, I've had the 220w heater on all day every day for the last week or two keeping my legs nice and toasty during this cold spell :)
I had another question : with the heater under the desk, do you feal heat in your whole body (so also in your arms and hands above your office), or is the heating pretty localized?
Tricky to answer - my legs and I guess the lower half of my body is definitely nice and toasty, and I don’t notice feeling cold in the rest of me even though they’re not directly being heated. Because it’s a small room, the whole room gets up to a nice temperature after a short while. So to answer your question directly, it’s very localised, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem in keeping you warm! In that respect it’s no different to having any other sort of heater (like a fan heater) under the desk.
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech I see. My room is not very small so I am trying to just heat myself, and keep the room cold to save energy. But since it is on feet I guess I could still try to put it on the desk, or on a piece of furniture behind me, or try a variety of other configurations :)
@@MaximeLambrecht Did you try this in your bigger room? Looking to do the same so I wonder what you experience was :) Thanks!
@@javidavi Haha, so I got the panel, but currently in belgium we got a super weird warm autumn weather thanks to climate change screwing things up, so I just tried it once but didn't need to plug it back again :P
I will try to come back here and tell you when I got to use it a bit more.
From my quick test, the panel is surprisingly mildly warm to the touch, so I guess you need to use it over a slightly longer period of time (like 30 min- 1 hour) to get a warming effect.
@@MaximeLambrecht Interesting. Yeah, I had read that it does take a while for it to heat (contrary to what marketing material says that it's instantaneous). However, given its low consumption, I think it's ok to leave it on for a few hours.
thank you
Has anyone ever actually seen theirs go to 37? I can set it to 37 but the highest I've ever seen it reach is 25. do I have a faulty unit?
Erm nope! That is the target room temperature… I wouldn’t expect to ever see it hit 37 unless we were in a heatwave! I usually set mine to 20-23 depending on how I’m feeling that day.
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech I appreciate the reply!
Strange everywhere I look they’re out of stock?
They’re in stock direct on the manufacturer’s web site
Just get a aqara temp sensor flash it and automate the thing without you having to interact with it ... Plug a smart plug in the socket and you're done ... but you need a kiasa 1000 watt
You can do that, or you can use my automation and not need to buy anything else at all
👍🏾
unavailable and not in the USA
If they’re not in stock on Amazon then they are on Herschel Infrared’s web site. I don’t know about their shipping policies to the US though, they are a British company.
So Herschel should be paying you for fixing a problem they can't, SMH.
Good Evening: At 1m23s you say that IR panels could save someone a lot of money compared to convection heaters, This is not correct. IR panels and convection heaters and fan heaters and radiant heaters all have teh same heating efficiency: 100% efficient. They may be simple, but with a battery to time switch they will be expensive. And you will not save money switching from one type of electrical heating to another type of electrical heating. This is just thermodynamics. Best wishes: M
Yes, all things being equal you are totally correct, and if you were swapping one for the other to directly heat a room then the same energy is used overall. But things are not equal in how they are used. Take the scenario of one single person sitting still in a large room and wanting to keep warm for an hour. With a 2kW convection heater next to them, most of the heat will be heating the room and the person may not feel the benefit of the heater during that hour depending on the size of the room. But put a 1kW (more than plenty for one person) FIR heater in front of them and they will feel the full benefit within a few minutes at a lower power output. Heat the person not the room and it can save you a lot. For full home heating there is no real saving I agree, but use them smartly and there can be.
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech Thank you for acknowledging my point. Regarding your point of 'heating teh person not the room': f you were talking about an old-fashioned 1 bar radiant heater, then that argument might make sense. But these radiant heaters are large pieces of wall-mounted furniture: they are a room-heating technology not person-heating technology. Unlike a radiant bar heater, they radiate their power in all directions including backwards! In a comparison with convector heaters I suspect the results would be pretty close,
Best wishes
M
The panels I'm reviewing are small portable heaters, to be compared with alternative portable heaters such as a plug-in convection heater, free-standing oil filled radiator, or a fan heater. The only one of those alternatives capable of beaming the heat straight at the person to provide rapid comfort is the fan heater, but that comes at a cost of a lot of noise which is no good to me while I'm working. Whilst I do briefly mention the use of FIR heaters for a whole home, I'm really not advocating their use in that scenario nor am I reviewing those - but as portable temporary heaters for people (not rooms) they can be an efficient way to provide that. (Edit to add another point :) ) - these FIR panels really do beam the heat forward. Whilst you can feel a bit of heat behind, it's just the warmth from the body and nearly all of the heat is projected straight forward at the front. I'd say any rear heat leakage is negligible with the panels I have. The wall behind my panel is cool whereas the wall opposite is warm.
I don't think the benefit fit the price
I think it very much depends on your situation. I work from home in a small study all day most days. For me, it is so low powered that it easily runs from my battery or solar panels and means I don't have to turn on the gas boiler. Firing up the boiler for the day at the moment would easily cost me £3-£4 in gas. Assuming £3.50 a day, I'd only need to use my £199 FIR panel heater 57 times for it to break even. Very rough maths there I know but it's just to demonstrate that it can make perfect sense in certain scenarios. Plus I'm not burning polluting gas while using it too!
Actually I forgot to include the cost of the additional offset off peak electricity, but you get the idea
Please turn off the background music. Most distracting. Apart from that good contact...thanks.
I’ve started reducing the volume a lot and being more selective about when I use it. I probably won’t stop it altogether though
That's good. Tried to reduce the volume a bit but then couldn't hear you properly. Thanks again for the content. I'm involved with a community shop in lochgilphead and we are looking at installing some of these.
Irritating and unnecessary music.
Why thank you, you were my muse :)
So, less of a review of a heater and more of a run down smart home automation lane. If after a review of a under desk heater, I'm still wondering how well it will warm my feet, then a review has truly has been a bit of a waste of time and sounds more click-baity than anything else.
Well, spoiler alert but I’m mostly a smart home channel… loads of other reviews out there about IR panels of various types. This is a smart IR panel so of course I concentrated on the smart components.
annoying music
There's plenty more where that came from...