What Are The Advantages of Electric Radiators?

If you ask most people, they’ll tell you that central heating radiators are better than electric radiators UK. However, this doesn’t mean that there are no advantages in having electric radiators UK. There are advantages with some of the features that you have with electric radiators in comparison to central heating radiators. We’re going to consider these key advantages below.

On Demand Heating

One of the biggest advantages of electric heaters is that they provide on demand electricity. This is relevant in two different ways:

1.       It means that you can turn on a single unit at a time. With central heating radiators, if you want heat in one particular room, then you have to turn on the entire central heating system, then go around turning off all of the other radiators, or heat up more than one room at a time.

2.       It means that the radiator heats up quickly. Electric heaters are hot almost straightaway (but it can depend on the type, fluid filled electric heaters take slightly longer than storage heaters). You just switch it on and you get heat.

Night Rate

Traditionally, electric heaters are considered more expensive than gas central heating radiators. However, gas and electricity prices are becoming closer matched, and with the advent of solar energy, it’s likely that electricity becomes cheaper than gas, this means that it’s often cheaper to run electric radiators. This is especially the case with night storage heaters that command a special night rate – about 4p per KWh of electricity, which is a third of the price of a typical day rate.

Safety Features

Electric heaters are safer than non-electric heaters. This may sound odd, because in real terms, gas radiators are safest. However, the electric radiators under go much more vigorous testing than the gas radiators (the gas boiler is strongly tested, but the radiators aren’t). Because electric radiators represent a greater risk, they have to conform to higher standards, and in the end, this makes them safer. For instance, they're much less likely to leak.

If you would like to browse a collection of electric radiators UK, then please visit designerradiatorsdirect

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What Dictates the Efficiency of a Radiator?

If you’re buying a radiator, then you will probably want to know how efficient the item will be. Its efficiency will determine the cost of your heating bills, and with exceptionally high rates of electricity and gas, most of us need to be careful with our energy use. When buying radiator, we need to know how much they’ll cost to run. We can determine this by considering several different factors: surface area, content volume and type, design, material and finish. We’ll consider each below.

Surface Area

The larger the surface area, the more heat it can output. However, if the surface area is too wide, long and high, it can lead to rapid heat loss, which clearly is inefficient. The most efficient radiators will compact as large a surface area into the unit as they can, without affecting the dimension of the unit. This may sound a bit complicated, but an example that you can probably relate to is that of cast iron radiators. Here, the radiators have columns, each column having six faces providing more surface area than vertical radiators of the same size (one there are two columns). For example, if you take a 50cm x 50cm flat panel radiator and a cast iron radiator of the same dimension, but made of two columns, the cast iron radiator actually has a larger surface area.

Volume

The next issue is that of content and volume. Generally, the less water a radiator contains, the faster it will heat up and the less money is spent getting it to temperature. However, the difference is marginal, and differences in heating cost would only become apparent over long periods. Across an entire system, it may become relevant. There’s also the issue that if it takes less time to heat up, it also takes less time to cool down too.

Shape and Design

The shape and design of a radiator has some effect on efficiency. Horizontal radiators are more efficient than vertical radiators. This is because hot air rises, so the vertical radiators will lose heat from the room at a faster rate. However, if they’re downstairs radiators, that tends to be ok, because it just means the upstairs rooms, are warmer.

If you would like to browse a collection of radiators, including vertical radiators, please visit designerradiatorsdirect 

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