Regency GF950L Gas Fireplace

Quality control issue and wifi not working – Disappointment. The optional wifi at 286AUD does not work. The finishing quality of the unit is very average. The 22mm finishing trim has scratches on the edge, the rope joint on the window is uneven. I suggest Regency to set a quality control department and hire qualified people to conduct quality check on every single unit. For a 7,000+AUD unit, this is the expectation from a consumer’s position. I do not recommend. Zero star.

Unbearable HUM – We purchased a Regency Greenfire 900L in November of 2018. What we discovered in that time is there is more to Regency Fire places than what you see in the pictures where you imagine the warm glow and the crackling of a log fire. In the show room and in the glossy brochure the Regency Gas fires look amazing. They would have to be the most realistic looking gas log fires on the market. We installed our fire and finally got a chance to use it properly in the winter of 2019. The thing you have to realise about Gas fires is that they don't put out any heat without a fan to force the heat into the room. This is not an issue as many devices employ this design such as split air-conditioners. Unfortunately for the Regency Greenfire 900L the fan is the major problem. During operation the fan was noticeable as it created a terrible HUM. The HUM would get worse as the fan speed was increased. The fan would literally cause the surround that we constructed around the fire to vibrate in sympathy with the HUM. Now starts the long saga of our story. As I have discovered Regency is a Canadian company who design these fires. The local operation is just the importer and not affiliated with Regency Canada. To complicate matters the Western Australian supplier gets stock from the East Coast based importer. I have to say that the Western Australian distributor was fantastic. Their service technician went above and beyond to help. I reported the HUM to the local distributor who looks after the warranties for Western Australia. They changed the fan unit and applied various padding and rubber stands, none of which helped with the HUM. The technician and I both contacted the Regency Distributor in the East and the Canadian manufacturer with NO responses on how to stop the HUM. After many visits by the Technician and attempts to stop the HUM it was decided to change the whole fire place. So at the beginning of 2020 the fire was replaced with a Greenfire 950L.

The HUM remains.

What this has identified is a massive design flaw in these fires. The design flaw relates to the fact that the Fire is essentially a thin sheet metal box screwed together with NO insulation or reinforcement. The fan unit sits below the log fire bed and is screwed down into the base of the steel box towards the rear of the unit. The vibration is caused by the interface between the fan and the internal flue at the back of the steel box where the air is forced up and over the firebox heating the air before being pushed into the room. As the fan operates it vibrates, the vibration is transferred into the flue and because these fires are just large mental boxes the vibration is amplified by the steel box into a HUM that fills the room. The HUM is obviously worse on the highest fan setting. It had been admitted to me that they do get complaints about the noise on the highest fan setting and the response to customers is "don't use the high fan speed"! That’s like a car manufacturer saying don't use the fifth gear if you don't like the vibration. Crazy.

The disappointing aspect of this saga is that the noise issue is not something mentioned in the brochures. They don't include a decibel reading that I could see. In the show rooms they play music and the noise from other customers tends to drown out any unwanted noise that may put people off buying the unit. I was given an excuse that the fan was very powerful. Well the fan units in split air-conditioners are more powerful and all I hear from them is the sound of air blowing past the grills, I don't hear a HUM from the motor unit inside.

After having the original 900L in bits the technician and I concluded that a better design would have been to mount the fan closer to the front of the unit and connect it via a rubber pipe to the internal flue. There has to be no connection between the fan and the metal cabinet otherwise the whole unit will HUM.

We used to have the free standing Regency fire which although being fan forced did not suffer from this HUM issue. I am now wishing I purchased another one of those. A fire should be seen and not HEARD unless it's the sound of crackling wood. So now I am stuck with $6000 fire that looks nice when it's turned off but I dread using it knowing that our home will be filled with an annoying HUM. Of course the HUM will not bother everyone, unfortunately it bothers me.