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Interview with the inventors of Radfan

We spoke to the inventors of Radfan-Roland Glancy and Dr.Simon Barker. Roland and Simon have invented a way of keeping warm in the winter, without paying through the roof. They have recently conducted a study that shows millions of us are staying longer in public places such as cafes and libraries to avoid going home and putting the heating on.

A- Interviewer

B- Inventors of Radfan

A: What did you find from this study?

B: The overall aim of the study was to really look at how people are heating their homes and the measures and the lengths that people are going to and what was fascinating is that 11% of the population are staying away from home and going to public places that have heating like cafes or libraries and those sorts of things but also that 36% for example are going to bed early to avoid having to put their heating on and then a good number of people are cuddling up with loved ones and their pets and going for jogs around the house to stay warm. So it’s really extraordinary lengths that people are going to try and stay warm and avoid paying for expensive heating.

A: Do you think that the rise in energy costs is going to continue to be a problem for both consumers and businesses?

B: Yes. We have seen since 2006 that energy prices have just been going up and up and up and as we know from the start of this winter where one energy company decides to tack on 11% they all follow suit and they are very slow to feed the reductions back to the customers. It’s never quite as much as they raised it by and I think for the next few years we are going to see energy prices to continue to increase. Maybe fracking will have an input in reducing it but no one really knows at the moment so for the foreseeable future things are going to get more expensive.

A: How is Radfan going to tackle this issue?

B: The way that Radfan is tackling those issues is that it is a very low power technology that lets you feel warmer. So very simply what it is, is it is a low power fan unit that you attach to the top of a central heating radiator and it redirects the flow of warm air horizontally out into the room but crucially it costs about £2 a year to operate in electricity and when you compare that to an electric fan heater for example. They cost about £2 a day so over the course of a winter a fan heater could cost you well over £60 to run and sometimes more than £100. So the Radfan is really a very low cost way to help you feel warmer and save energy off your heating bill.

A: Have you seen a rise in interest in your business as a result of these rising energy costs?

B: Yes definitely. We have had a lot of customers who get in touch with before and after buying a Radfan who not only say how great they product is in helping them, they are also asking us for other tips because obviously we are selling a central heating product and we do know quite a lot about central heating. So we get a lot of people coming to us for advice and after answering several hundred emails we decided to put all of that information together into a free ebook that we hand out to people to say that not only is it about using your central heating in a more sensible way but just doing the basics like making sure the letterbox is shut after the post man’s been, insulating up your home, making sure there aren’t any cold drafts, so there is quite a lot you can do and we have people coming to us all the time asking for that advice.

A: How did this all begin? How did you come up with the idea of it?

B: The idea was my idea and it really came from the fact that my wife used to sit next to me on the sofa and forever complaining about being cold even through the central heating was on and the radiators were warm and she would constantly nag me that she was cold and the house wasn’t warm enough. So it struck me that all the heating in the radiator was going straight up it was escaping out the window it was sitting on the ceiling and it wasn’t getting a few feet sideways to where my wife was sat so I thought well, let’s see if I can do something about that and so I bought some cheap fans off eBay and made a paper and cardboard model and it seemed to do the trick. So I thought if I’ve solved the problem in my home there are probably many other houses around the UK that suffer the same kind of problem. So I developed the idea from there really.

A: Do you have any plans to expand then?

B: Yes, absolutely. We’re really ambitious for the idea of the Radfan and the concept and where we can take it. The Radfan is very much our first product to market, it’s a great product, it works really well but we believe there’s a lot more legs in it. It can get more sophisticated, it can get cleverer, we can do longer versions, quieter versions, more efficient versions, so we really believe that there’s lots of scope in improving central heating. Its amasing when you think about it that the central heating radiator that’s in 85% of our homes and keeps us warm the design hasn’t really changed in over fifty years and so we are really looking forward to innovating on that and making it a more effective way of keeping us warm.

A: Where can people go to for more information?

B: The ebook and lots more information about the Radfan and what we are up to is all on our website which is www.radfan.com

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Broadcast Exchange .