Electric Heating Systems

Energy-saving requires us to change our behaviours in a lot of ways. Some of them are obvious like turning out the lights when you leave a room, don't leave devices on standby, switch them off etc.

But energy-efficient heating like Infrared also requires changes in behaviour which I have to confess I found a bit counter-intuitive when I first learned them but with practice (and a little "pat on the back" when you get your first low electric bill!), seem to make sense.

You see, probaby like most people, I heated the house via a combination of a timer and by temperature. So I would set things up to warm up the house a few hours before getting up in the morning and then switch it all back down again during the day while I was out, and then I would have it warm everything back up again for when I came back in in the evening and then regulate it just by temperature during the evening (so if it got too hot I'd drop the thermostat or if it was too cold, I'd bump the thermostat up). In this way I felt I was saving energy (which is why I found the changes brought by IR a bit counter-intuitive).

What I didn't realise is that heating up a building - which actually really meant only heating up the air inside it to get temporary comfort - is very inefficient in itself as a lot of energy is required to make-up for big temperature dips in a short period of time and equally all that good energy is lost when the heating turns off.

Because Infrared heating works by heating up objects, not the air, you can (and should) adopt a different approach which goes against the above behaviour but it actually saves energy. IR heating is meant to be left on all the time, at a sufficient power to maintain the fabric of a house at a comfortable 21°C. Whilst it takes perhaps 24 hours to raise the overall warmth of the house to this temperature, two things become evident:

a) it takes very little energy just to maintain that threshold and the fabric of the house: the walls and other objects then take-over the radiating job for you. The heater itself can effectively just “tick over” after that. It is more economical to "leave" the radiator in this state, however "odd" that feels.

b) In a house using convection heating, a comfort temperature of 21°C requires the air temperature itself to be raised to 21°C. But with Infrared, the tolerable air temperature of the room does not have to be anywhere near 21°C to allow one to feel comfortable. Indeed, studies have shown that an "air" comfort temperature of just 15°C is entirely tolerable if the walls are at 22°C and that that tolerable air temperature can DROP, the warmer the walls become. Incidentally, lowering the air temperature by 1°C equates to a heat energy saving of about 5%.

The other funny thing was, that only with the energy-efficient heating installed, do you realise how draughty your house is. It was only at that point that I went around the house hunting for the air leaks and causes of draughts that I SHOULD have done years before when using my old oil heating. All I was doing previously was heating up the air for it to be sucked away through cracks, gaps etc.

Find the perfect space heater at Sam's Guide to Small Space Heaters

Many a home owner on the look out for something new to replace an old, inefficient heating system probably knows a thing or two about the exceptional efficiency of geothermal heat pumps. But few people are aware of the new 95% efficient condensing boilers fueled by natural gas.

While a geothermal heat pump’s 350% efficiency far outstrips that of a 95% efficient condensing boiler, higher

According to the National Fire Protection Assoc. (NFPA) heating equipment was the second leading cause of home fires and home fire deaths.

The heating equipment category includes central heating, fixed and portable space heaters and wood stoves. Of these, fixed space heaters (wall mounted or freestanding propane heaters) accounted for 17% of the fires and 28% of the civilian deaths.

Portable

I have enhanced the Green Energy (Eu) website.

If you take a look at the thumbnail in this post, there are two reasons why I changed things.

a) The sidebar on the right hand side contained links nobody was clicking on.
b) As a result of the right-hand sidebar, the actual page content was being squeezed too thin and was forcing certain content and display choices which were always compromises.

It was time to remove that sidebar. With it gone, the whole site has opened up. It looks great.

One of the big advantages of Infrared heating is in the absence of maintenance costs and its massive half-life. Not only does this give an owner considerable peace of mind, but it constitutes one of the big "hidden issues" (and costs) of gas or oil boilers.

The materials used in Redwell Infrared heaters, certainly, are sealed-for-life at manufacture and contain no moving parts. Components used in Redwell Infrared heaters have a life expectancy of 100+ years, giving the heaters at least a half-life of 50 years.

Compare this with a boiler which at the very least requires annual cleaning if not actual servicing of the igniter points, injector or blower. And a boiler's maximum life is only 25 years (quite apart from its massive reduction in energy-efficiency past year 5 which increases its running cost) which gives it a half-life of 12.5 years tops. (Cf our previous post on why you shouldn't just look at the purchase cost of IR Vs boilers when making a price decision).

You'll be replacing your boiler four times for every one investment in your infrared heating system. Leave aside the fact that IR heaters are so much cheaper to run.

In what follows, I can only vouch for the Redwell brand of infra red heaters and not for other brands which may not be as well coated or electrically as stable.

For heaters that are designed to operate within close reach of people then the answer is "these heaters are safe". There is the Redwell Sittingwave heater, which is designed to be sat on, and has an element surface temperature of 65⁰C which is comparable to a centrally heated water-filled radiator.

All other non-ceiling-mounted and non-industrial heaters have an element surface temperature of 95⁰C. Whilst ostensibly this is "too hot to touch", Redwell's mitigation for this is to apply a thermally non-conductive powder coating to the stanless steel casing of the heaters, which enables temporary contact with the unit without scalding. And you can definitely snuggle-up to units like the Free-Standing heater without risk.

Now, in cases where people are immobile or possibly vulnerable in other ways such as in hospitals or in schools, the types of heater recommended and installation instructions clearly indicate that the units should be wall or ceiling mounted and out of reach.

Ceiling mounted heaters - the rolling wave and panel wave - have a surface temperature of 120⁰C and are explicitly designed to be mounted out of both incidental and accidental human reach and carry the appropriate warning labels.

In no case with the above types of heater is there a scorching or fire risk. (For comparison's sake, electric bar fires which do carry significant risk of scorching and fire have a surface temperature of between 525⁰C - 800⁰C).

The Industrial infrared heater is a different kettle of fish, having a surface temperature more akin to an electric bar fire (up to 900⁰C) but this unit has comparable safety considerations to comparable non-infrared units designed for industrial space heating.

So yes, infrared panels tend to be about 30⁰C hotter than central heating radiators. Some IR heaters are explcitly designed to allow you to snuggle-close to them on a cold winter's night, such as the sitting wave and free-standing models. The hotter domestic and office models are designed for out-of-the-way installation - and this is clearly marked - whilst the industrial heater carries the same safety considerations as other industrial heaters.