Plinth heaters in kitchen

[sycamore54321]

Competing with the plinth drawers thread! My builder has suggested plinth / kick board heaters instead of needing to find wall space for a radiator in my kitchen renovation.

These would be linked to my central heating and have some form of pump to push out hot air.

It sounds genius to me - but possibly too good to be true? Does anyone have any experience of the pros and cons?

I have one. It's basically an electric fan in front of a tiny radiator. They're effective, but they make noise as you'd expect a fan to. Ours is actually not essential because it's at one end of a long, south-facing room that has a big radiator halfway down it, but I do like it in the depths of winter for taking the chill off the kitchen floor.

Had these in previous home. As PP said, you can hear them running but they do the job if you want to avoid a radiator as we did. Not needed here due to different layout but I would be happy to have them again in future.

I looked into this but ruled them out because of the noise.

I have one, yes there is a slight whirr but you eventually don't hear it anymore- I only really notice it when it stops. In the winter it's one of my fav places to stand and get a blast of hot air around my feet

We had one in our previous house which was linked to the central heating system. When we put in a new kitchen at our new home we put in an electric one. I find the electric one noisier than the one that was linked to the central heating but neither are excessively noisy (certainly much quieter than the hob extractor). In both houses they replaced radiators which freed up a lot of wall space for additional cupboards.

That’s great thanks everyone. I think I can tolerate some low level noise as it’s the kitchen and dining area so not somewhere you’d be reading a book in complete silence or something.

Glad to see they are good at making the place cost and warm - I hate feeling the cold! And it will be great to avoid a big radiator taking up valuable wall space.

I wanted one but the plumber persuaded me to put a compact radiator behind the door instead and more efficient zoning in the heating system. According to him they have a short life and are a pain to fix/replace. I was decisioned out of it by the time we had the conversation so took his advice. My mum had one in her old house and it wasn't strong enough for the size of the room (big kitchen diner) so a bit pointless as she just turned on the heating when she needed it.

We ended up putting tall and narrow radiators in rather than the usual low and long ones that need a lot of wall. And they’re lovely in winter when you come in from the cold and can just lean against them for a minute and get a lovely warm back.