Tuesday, 27 January 2015

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 

Follow us :
  

2 comments:

  1. I wish to express my appreciation to this writer just for bailing me out of this dilemma. Right after searching throughout the the web and finding principles that were not powerful, I thought my life was gone. Being alive without the presence of strategies to the issues you have resolved all through this write-up is a crucial case, and the ones which may have adversely affected my career if I had not encountered the blog. Your own mastery and kindness in taking care of all the pieces was excellent. I am not sure what I would've done if I hadn't come upon such a thing like this. It's possible to at this time relish my future. Thank you very much for your impressive and result oriented guide. I won't hesitate to suggest your web site to any person who should receive support on this area.
    double vertical radiator

    ReplyDelete
  2. My wife and i felt really lucky that Ervin managed to do his preliminary research with the precious recommendations he came across while using the web page. It's not at all simplistic to just happen to be giving freely secrets which usually men and women have been making money from. Therefore we remember we have the website owner to give thanks to for this. The most important explanations you have made, the easy site menu, the relationships you will give support to promote - it's got all incredible, and it is letting our son in addition to our family consider that this subject is excellent, which is unbelievably essential. Thank you for everything!
    modern cast iron radiators

    ReplyDelete