Customer Reviews

DeLonghi DR18T Rapido Heavy Duty Oil-Filled Radiator

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I use this unit in my bedroom to augment central heat at night. I turn the central heat thermostat down so as not to heat the whole house of unoccupied rooms. (I live in southern Louisiana. We only need heat sporadically throughout the winter.)
Turning the unit on a few hours before bedtime does the trick.. I leave it on all night and turn it off in the morning when I leave. I prefer to use a medium setting because after 3 months, the unit still emits an unpleasant odor at the highest setting. The odor is not overpowering, but is still there. Perhaps the odor is due to the oil filled nature of the product. Maybe mine is defective. The instruction manual says that the odor is only temporary. "Temporary" is NOT defined!

If you have high ceilings, this may not be the unit for you as the heat goes straight up. My ceilings are 8 feet and I only use it for the bedroom.

If I was to buy another heater, I would not buy this unit again because of the odor.

The DeLonghi works okay. Unlike other radiator heaters, the design of the chassis concentrates the heat output primarily from the top. You don't have to worry about items adjacent to the heater getting too warm. The design, however, can be a bit of a drawback if your room has very ceilings (I have 9.5 feet) - requiring more time to warm the room.

It's a bit pricey. I've used a similar radiator heater from Holmes that cost half the price. Although it doesn't bear the fancy design, it outputs the same amount of heat.

After spending hours on the internet researching heaters for my garage, I decided on the Delonghi DR18T Rapido Oil filled radiator. I felt it would do the job that I needed, at the price I was looking to spend. I don't need my garage to be 75 degrees, all I was looking for was a way to take the chill out of the air this winter.

I purchased this radiator for my 3 dogs. I have a 3-car garage and it gets awfully cold in the Oklahoma winters. I thought about what I could do to heat it up for my dogs this winter, because the back door is open all the time so they can go in and out. It's a large garage, and with the door open it makes it even more of a challenge.

I decided to put up plastic sheeting blocking off one third of the garage (the storage side, also the side with the door), leaving two thirds open (the side the dogs sleep in). They go outside through a slit in the plastic. I put the radiator next to their bed and it does the trick. The garage stays a toasty 50-55 degrees (remember these are dogs, 50 is fine for them), even when it is snowing, windy, and in the teens outside (as it was this week). And when they are sleeping on their bed, the radiator puts out plenty of heat for them, and I'm sure it is much higher than 50 degrees within a few feet of the radiator.

I think this radiator will definitely do the job this winter. I thought it might be a little dangerous with the dogs, especially since one of them likes to get into everything. But they haven't messed with it so far. It was easy to assemble, and I had it up and running in a few minutes. It solved my problem, and my dogs love it!

We heat our two-bedroom condo with four DeLonghi DR18s. Our Northern California climate is moderate in the winter -- 40s to 50 at night. The baseboard heaters built into our condo impede furniture placement and are very inefficient.

On a friend's advice we bought the DeLonghis for all our heating needs. One heater will take care of an average bedroom or office. You'll need two for the living room/dining room area.

The design, features, quality and safety of these heaters, which we've owned for two years, have presented no problems. (Except, the wheel assembly mechanisms are not up to the quality of the rest of the unit.)

Our winter electric bills continue to shock us, however. Don't forget, even at its lowest setting one of these heaters uses 600W. And in our home, most are on all the time in the winter months -- either at the low setting or higher as required. (These heaters take a lot of time to heat a cold room and it's more efficient to leave them on low, using the built-in timers if necessary to turn them off for moderate intervals when you're at work, etc.)

Despite the high electric costs ($300/month avg.) we're going to keep the DeLonghis. We're keeping them for the reasons we bought them. Now we take care to set them at the minimum required for the setting.

P.S.: DeLonghi build good stuff. We have a portable air conditioner built by them and after five years it continues to provide excellent service.