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.
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