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Free Heat?

"Scientific new way to get extra heat without using extra fuel!" proclaims a recent advertisement in The Christian Science Monitor. For only $4.98 plus 75¢ postage and handling, a concern called American Consumer, Inc., of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, will send a set of four "sensational" devices. Each device appears to be a flexible aluminum strip called an "Instant Aluminum Radiator." Illustrations show how the strips are to be attached to baseboard heat units, air dust grills or steam pipes.

The implication is that by using these radiating fins to increase the rate of heat exchange within a room, one can increase the amount of heat obtained from a given amount of fuel. By and large, it's a phony implication.

Such devices placed on a metal stovepipe chimney could increase the heat going to the room and reduce the amount going out the chimney. (This is the idea of the stack robber.) But attached to electric baseboard heating units, to air duct grills and to heat circulating pipes within a house, the added radiators will have no effect of value. Since each "Instant Aluminum Radiator" has 30 square inches of fins, its use is equivalent to putting in the same place a 5-inch by 6-inch sheet of aluminum foil or stiff aluminum sheet.

If you have an application where you obviously benefit by adding 4 sheets of 5-inch by 6-inch aluminum foil to increase the heat exchange rate, then you might want to order the "Instant Aluminum Radiator." On the other hand, you could just use the aluminum foil.