Climastar heating is a new form of electric heating that advertises itself as a cost efficient way of heating your home while replacing night storage heaters. It has been advertised a lot in the Times which is where my mum purchased a system for her new flat. When looking to install this system we couldn’t really find much in the way of a Climastar heating review so I thought I would write one myself.

Climastar sell Magma stone heating systems and have been in business for 25 years. The stone heaters are supposed to heat rooms quickly and only use energy when and where it is needed.

My mum had radiators installed in the hallway, kitchen, lounge, bathroom and 2 bedrooms. She also opted for the wifi system which meant that she could control all of the radiators through an app whether she was at home or out and about.

The installation of the system went OK. They did have to add one more electric point for one of the radiators which was done by the installers. They also took away her old night storage heaters as part of the deal.

They had to make an adjustment to her meter which they told her had removed the night rate and only left her with a day rate. Turns out that this was not correct, there was still a night rate and this did create some problems with British Gas which were eventually sorted.

She was pleased with the radiators themselves, they were installed quickly as she chose the limestone ones that they already had in stock so she didn’t have to wait.

One thing that she did comment on was that all of the pictures of the radiators in the brochure and on the website didn’t have any sockets next to them so they looked really sleek. In reality you have to have a socket next to each one to run it off (see pic).

Each radiator has a thermostat that can either be fixed to a wall or left freestanding. Each one controls that radiator and you can access them separately. If you want to control the whole system at the same time then (as I understand it) you either need to have the wifi option installed so that you can control them from the App, or you need to attach all of the radiators to one thermostat.

I have to say that, despite classing myself as reasonably tech savvy, I found the whole system quite difficult to understand and set up, even with the instructions. We had problems synching the thermostats to the radiators, which Climastar sent someone round to fix, and also struggled to understand they whole setting of temperatures during the day. Once we did get to understand it, we were slightly disappointed to find out that you can’t actually set different temperatures during different times of the day, you can only select one temperature for the radiator and then you have the option to either have it on eco setting (which is 3 degrees below that specific temperature) or frost mode.

So if, like me, you are used to having a system (Hive in my case) where you can set different temperatures throughout the day, then you will be sorely disappointed.

Another issue arose after finally getting the radiators to link up to the app (which also took another visit from Climastar), in that 4 out of the 6 radiators then showed offline and would not connect back up to the app. This problem is still outstanding and my mum is awaiting another visit to get this sorted.

So the radiators were installed around 3 months ago and the system is still not fully up and running. Luckily she hasn’t had to use the radiators yet as her flat has been warm enough without them on. I will update this Climastar heating review once the radiators have been in use for a while to see if they are as efficient as they are made out to be.

At the moment my mum is slightly ruing having paid over £8,000 for a system that seems to have limitations and doesn’t seem to work as promised. She is hoping to get the wifi element refunded as that just doesn’t seem to work. I think it’s only fair to give the system a bit longer to say whether it was worth purchasing or not and maybe my mum has just been unlucky with her installation but overall I think we would only give it a 6 or 7 out of ten.

ADDED: November 2023

The system has now been in for over a year. Obviously it has not been needed at all over the summer so now it is starting to kick back in for winter. All of the radiators have gone offline on the App and need reconnecting. However, my mum is not going to do this as she has done it in the past and they have just dropped offline again. This effectively renders the App useless.

The radiators once again did not reset their times when the clocks went back, despite assurances that they should. The thermostats are so touch sensitive that it is quite tricky to reset the clocks on some of them without going through and missing the hour change part. One thermostat did somehow take 3 hours off its time, others nothing!

If you asked my mum then she would say do not buy this system. In fact if you asked me I would say the same. I don’t believe that enough information is given on the cost of running the system. The fact that Climastar actually do say that you will save money to me is possibly misleading at best:

Electric heating systems, including electric radiators, excel at converting electricity into heat, eliminating energy losses associated with fuel transportation and combustion. This efficiency translates into reduced energy consumption and lower utility bills.

EDF Energy have a good page on advising the difference in costs between gas and electric here. There are plenty of electric radiator companies who say electric heating is cheaper and boiler companies who say gas heating is!