Superseal Magic Box

A question about : Superseal Magic Box

Does anyone have any experience of Superseal (Glasgow based company) and their Magic Box.

I was contact by telephone cold call, where it was claimed I could half my heating costs. I was sceptical but interested and two salesmen came round.

Essentially the magic box sits next to the boiler and causes the hot water to travel through the heating system faster but at a lower temperature. Making the heating system work more efficiently.

The cost is high Ј8,500, but if I can really save what they say I will recover that in less than 6 years.

I have signed up but within the 7 day cooling off period. I have my doubts - reviews on their own website are good - but are they real?

Would appreciate any experiences people have had.

Best answers:

• This sounds terrifying!
  For starters you said it sits next to your boiler, so the heating of your house will still be done by the boiler. You can't half the energy going in and still get the same heat out, unless this magic box is making your boiler 100% more efficient!
  Also, how can it save you Ј8.5k in 6 years? Even if it could half your heating costs, does it really cost you Ј2,833pa (Ј8.5k/6 years *2) to heat your house now?
  Can you supply more info?
  Mart.
• If this is the guys, then it's a thermodynamic panel system.
  https://www.supersealltd.co.uk/
  Mart.
• I tried to post a link but as a new user I couldn't. If you google superseal magic box you get the details
  I need to make up my mind very soon as the 7 day cooling off period is on Monday. I think my doubts are telling me to cancel, but I would appreciate if anyone has this system or for any engineers - their opinion.
• Hiya M&M, I'm sure somebody will be along who can give better advice, but it would be extremely helpful if you could post some details to help analyse the numbers.
  I know very little about thermodynamic panels (TP's) but most of the bumpf I've read has been aimed at domestic hot water (DHW) with perhaps 1 panel, and prices Ј2.5k or more. For house heating I assume that it will be a larger internal system (?) and a lot more panels. Perhaps you could list:
  Current boiler fuel type,
  current annual fuel bill,
  some system specifics of the TPs, especially how many will be installed,
  where will they go, is it sunny, shaded, south facing, various orientations etc,
  will the system be sufficiently large to work through the winter, or will the boiler have to do all the heavy lifting.
  As Eric says this is a numbers game, and you'll need to compare costs and savings to get a better idea of the value of this investment.
  Also have you considered alternatives, insulate, insulate, insulate - can you bring your bills down more simply. If not,
  Ј8.5k might pay for EWI (external wall insulation) and that might half (or better) your bills.
  PV install, and use the FiT subsidy towards your heating bill, and an intelligent diversionary switch to heat your DHW during the summer months, and help a bit during the colder months.
  Mart.
• It's not going to halve your heating costs. Halving the heating costs by alterations to the boiler alone would mean doubling the boiler efficiency. However, typical boiler efficiencies range from 60-90% - all of which double to *more* than 100%, which is impossible. You'd have to add more heat from somewhere to make these savings possible.
  Oh, I forgot to add, cancelling it if you need more time is the safest option. You'll still be able to buy it later if you really want it.
• Its not a thermodynamic panel system, its a box of tricks that hopes by a combination of running the water through faster and at a lower temperature, plus a bit of heat exchange between the boiler output and input flows to lower energy use. https://www.supersealltd.co.uk/magic-heating-box/
  The tests whilst showing some benefits have some significant flaws. The Trinity Dublin test was run on a system in a massive lab with no room thermostat so was purely looking at how fast the system could output heat. Clearly a system trying to heat water to 80C to be cooled on the heating circuit is going to use more energy than one heating to 60C. That much is logically obvious since a huge room with no thermostat is going to take as much heat out as possible whatever the circulating temperature and will therefore require it to be replaced.
  Most home central heating systems don't work like that - the boiler cycles not just because the circulating water temperature drops but also because the room reaches the required temperature. Circulating water at 80C should mean the room reaches desired temperature quicker and so the thermostat shuts off fuel use. On the other hand a condensing boiler might work more efficiently if the return water is cooler so the 60C temperature might save fuel not only by not triggering the boiler as frequently when the thermostat is on, but also because the condensing effect will work better.
  I'm by no means an expert in this field but for me the available and touted evidence isn't conclusive enough to warrant Ј8500 for a heat exchanger and a faster pump!
• Cancel and run faster than you can say "snake oil".
  This is so wrong on two completely different levels:
  First, to save Ј8500 in six years, you'd need to save about Ј1400 per year, which if the claim of halving bills is true they'd need to be Ј2800. That's an enormous amount of gas and unless you're living in a National Trust type huge, draughty mansion I'd be very surprised you'd be using that amount of gas in one year.
  Second, how can such a simple device possibly justify that price tag, regardless of how much it saves?
  With Ј8500 there are lots of ways you could save energy, most of them with a fair bit of change left over.
  You could buy a more efficient boiler if your current one is not very efficient. You could install a 4kW solar PV system. You could possibly insulate the exterior walls, depending on the size of the house.
• As Ed said - cancel asap!!
  There may be some benefits, but they are likely to be tiny.
  I would also say that some of their claims are dubious, so much so that I'm going to write to trading standards.
  My advice would be to avoid this company.
• So OP did you cancel?
  We have a fairly large 1930s house. Heating (gas) costs are around Ј800 per year. Even if (very big IF!) we could save 50% on our gas bill we would only save Ј400 pa which would give over 20 year payback. 50% sounds very high so you're more likely looking at 50 year payback which doesn't make it look so appealing.
  If this really was the revolution that they claim don't you think it would be installed everywhere, not least by the govt that need to cut CO2 emissions by 2020.
• I had to do a boiler change last week, the customer had a Magic Box fitted about two months prior to our arrival, it may have been a different company but there are lots of company's marketing these, the main info about them is the suppliers saying how good they are.....
  As his 26 year old boiler had given up, I feel the savings he is going to notice are going to be more to the fact he has a modern condensing boiler now.
  As the installers left no documentation for anything they fitted it was hard to make my mind up if it does what it says on the tin, but in my view it looks like an expensive low loss header, and there is no doubt in my mind it cost a lot for this to be fitted.
  As the flow and return from the boiler are connected direct to the Magic Box it was quite an easy change, but, it was only when I tested the system afte fitting the new boiler, and the first floor heating wouldn't work that other things showed up!
  All I can say is this box must be really Magic
  The magnaclean they had fitted, would have only been on the first floors heating return, so all water from the ground floor heating would have missed the magnaclean.
  On further investigation it emerged the magnaclean was in fact fitted on the heating cold feed, so it wasn't doing anything!
  We altered the pipe work, moved the magnaclean, and tested the system, something the Magic Box installers didn't do!
  Installing this cost between Ј8000 & Ј13000 I can assume from figures found on the web, and it wasn't installed correctly, no documentation for equipment had been left, hadn't been tested and commissioned, it was just a case of throw it in and run away.
  Throw in the claims of 30-50% savings on fuel bills! This could have been possible on this property as the first floor heating was never going to work, but otherwise, no chance!
  Avoid like the plague!
• mum & dad has just had them in, the guy said, on a Ј500+ annual energy bill, they could save Ј800+ a year
• This is about Ј 300-400 of kit being installed at a cost to the end user of over Ј 10,000.
  Savings might, just, amount to 5% on an older boiler, but you'd be better replacing anything over 10 years of age with a new condesing boiler at a third of the cost or less - and then see real savings of perhaps 25%!