Why More And More People Are Are Choosing To Install Underfloor Heating?

When it comes to home heating, underfloor systems are fast becoming the option of choice for many householders.  Many of you will be wondering whether it is just a fad, or whether it is here to stay.

In this article, we are going to look at some of the reasons people are choosing to install underfloor heating in their homes. By the time you reach the end of this article, you should understand whether it's a fad or not.

Extra Levels of Comfort

There's no doubt about it when it comes to comfort, underfloor heating systems have something that most other heating systems do not. The only exception, perhaps, is the open fire, which takes us humans back to our roots and mesmerises our minds. 

Fires are cosy, but they tend to be messy and smelly too.  With underfloor heating, there is no mess. The entire system, including the underfloor heating accessories, is all hidden from view under floorboards or carpet.

Underfloor heating offers comfort in a way that no other system can. The feel of walking on a warm floor is something that everyone should experience at least once. And, if you can experience it every day, that will bring a little gem of luxury to your everyday life.

I can guarantee that if you're one of those people who love luxury, you'll find yourself lying on the floor just to get that full comfort feeling from your underfloor heating.  And your pets and children will be lying on the floor for sure!

Great Efficiency

As long as you install your underfloor heating under an acceptable flooring type, and if you buy the wet systems rather than the electric systems, then you will find that your underfloor heating is more efficient than your radiators are.

There are several reasons for this:

1. Underfloor heating offers fantastic heat distribution as it covers a wider footprint when compared to radiators for fireplaces. It effectively covers the entire room.

2. Because hot air rises, underfloor heating as able to eat more of the room than a traditional radiator can. It heats from the very bottom upwards, where a radiator heats from around 10 inches off the ground.

  

In the long term, as long as you have the right type of floor, you should start to see savings on your energy bills within a very short amount of time.  

But remember, this is true of the wet systems but not of the not the electric systems. The electric underfloor heating systems are cheaper to run than electric radiators but more expensive to run than central heating radiators.

It Can Bring a Luxury Feel to the Home

Finally, underfloor heating brings a level of luxury to the home that radiators simply can't. For this reason, installing underfloor heating and can help to increase the value of your property.  Just make sure that the underfloor heating accessories are hidden below the floor because it's all about being as understated as possible while giving as much value as possible.

Is underfloor heating here to stay? Most homeowners and builders would say yes.

How to Kill It with Your Interior Design

Are you fed up with being the person whose home always seems to lack a little style?  If you don't have that sort of flair, it can be difficult to get it right. Fortunately, flair is something that you can learn and I'm going to give you some top tips to help you make the most of your interior design.

Get It Right from the Start

The first thing you need to do is set yourself up for success, rather than failure.  To do this, all you need to do is sit down and determine your style before you start messing around with any of the designs.

By determining and defining your style from the off, you will avoid one of the most common problems with interior design, which is a lack of consistency. 

The human brain naturally prefers things that are consistent and not chaotic. It will, therefore, prefer a consistent style of decor as well.

You must establish the sort of styles you like and the sort of styles and dislike. Don't just go with the flow, or what's popular now. Just because a style is popular, it doesn't mean that you will like it. 

If you're umming and ahhing about that particular style, then it's a good idea to look for a different style.

Understand the Space You’re Working With

Next, you need to understand the space that you are working with to ensure that you select the correct decor and furniture.

For example, if you are working with a small space, you should be looking for small items that will fit in a room. For example, rather than going for a traditional horizontal radiator, you should go for vertical designer radiators instead.

With larger spaces, you need to make sure that it flows clearly through the room. To manage this, you should think about zoning the room. For example, have a zone that acts like a work area, a zone for the TV area, and the zone for the fireplace. Make sure that they blend, but that they are demarcated.

Test, Test, Test

Before settling on a colour scheme, test patches of the wall. Colour that might look ideal in a showroom isn't necessarily going to look good in your living room. It's important that you understand that a colour will change depending on the room.  

For example, grey might work very well in one particular room because it gets plenty of sunlight, but in another room, it might look too dark.

The same thing goes for certain items of furniture, such as your sofas and your radiators. Try to imagine what your room will look like with new vertical designer radiators compared to, say, horizontal designer radiators.

These tips might sound obvious or irrelevant, that they will make all the difference to your interior design. They are worth taking into account when you decorating a room.

How to Choose a Decent Radiator When You’re Overwhelmed with Choice

One thing we can say for certain is that when it comes to choice, there are a many radiator options. As with most things in life, when there is too much choice, it can start to become confusing and we can become stuck wondering if we are making the right decision, flipping from one radiator, to the next, to the next. 

Well, in this article, we are going to try to help you make sense of all of these radiator choices by providing you with some categories that you can choose to limit your search. In other words, when you use the search function on the online retail shops, you can limit your search by these parameters:

Heat Output

Different rooms require different amount of heat, so the first way to limit your search when looking for radiators for sale is to work out exactly how many BTU you need.

To do this, use an online BTU calculator. You can find them on most radiator retail sites and they are free to use. They will return to you a figure, e.g. 3000btu/ph. You then limit your search to radiators that can provide 3000btu/ph.

Size

Next, you might want to look for a particular size of radiator. For example, in a large space, you might want to buy a large radiator, as that will look best in the space.

You might be wondering how this relates to heat output as the size of the radiator makes a difference to the amount of heat it can put out. However, modern radiators have come a long way in recent years and the manufacturers have found different ways to increase surface area without increasing overall size.

This means that you do have some control over the size of the radiator, regardless of heat output. In other words, you can find 3000btu/ph. radiators in a variety of different sizes. Therefore, you can still take size into consideration.

Efficiency Rating

The efficiency of a radiator basically corresponds to the amount of energy it uses to produce a specific amount of heat. For instance, one 3000btu/ph. radiator may use 500 watts per hour (and cost around 8p per hour to run) but another 3000btu/ph. radiator may only use 400 watts per hour. This second radiator is more efficient because it uses less energy to reach the same temperature.

Fortunately, you don’t have to do your own maths. Radiators for sale in the UK have to give details of their efficiency rating to be legal. Just look for radiators that have an efficiency rating of ‘A’ or more.

Colour

Again, the traditional wisdom is that all radiators should be white. However, radiators have come a long way. Once you have all of the parameters above worked out, you can sort the rest of the radiators by colour.

Finally once you have made your choice, but haven't yet made the purchase, do some research to make sure that the radiator manufacturer has a solid reputation.

Things You Need to Be Aware of When Buying a Designer Radiator

In the past, radiators used to be pretty much standardized in terms of their style. Typically, everybody bought the traditional corrugated radiators with which you will be familiar. However, Radiator manufacturing has come a long way in recent years and now it is possible to find designer radiators.

In fact, designer radiators are so popular that there are thousands of different styles that you can choose from.

However, before you rush out and buy your new designer radiators, it is important that you understand how to make the right decision.  Just because a radiator is labelled 'designer', it doesn't mean that it is the best radiator on the market or that it will be efficient.

Instead, before you part with any money, you have to make sure that your new radiators have the following features.

It doesn't matter if you are buying expensive designer radiators or cheap designer radiators, you must buy the radiator only once these conditions have been met.

Efficiency

The first issue with designer radiators is their efficiency. Sometimes, the manufacturers will put style above efficiency. If you buy an inefficient radiator,  they will cost you more to run in the long-term.

When you are buying a designer radiator, make sure that you've looked at the efficiency rating provided by the manufacturer. It needs to be at least A-grade  in order for you to buy it. Otherwise, you will end up spending more money on your energy bills than is appropriate.

Heat Output

The next thing to look out for is the amount of heat the radiator can produce. Unfortunately, designer radiators can come in all shapes and sizes. This means that their heat output might not necessarily be as good as a traditional radiator.

You have to use a BTU calculator to work out how  much heat your room requires and then match the figure given to the radiator you are buying. You can find a free BTU calculator by following the links in this article.

Make sure that your radiator can provide enough heat by matching the BTU figure to the radiator. For example, if the  calculator tells you that you've need 2000 BTU, then the radiator must be able to produce 2000 BTU per hour.

If you are in any doubt as to how to use a BTU calculator (they are very straightforward, so the vast majority of people will have no problem here), then get in touch with your local radiator retailer for advice. They will help you to use the calculator properly.

Style

Only once you have covered the above conditions should you start to consider the style of the radiator. When buying designer radiators, imagine what they will look like in your home. Don't just go by what they look like on the internet or in the showrooms. They might look great with a particular style of decor, but with your decor, might not look as good.

It's very easy to be swept away by product descriptions and images. You need to take a step back to make sure that the radiator is suitable for your space.  Even if you buy cheap designer radiators, you still want to make sure that it fits with your style of decor. Money is money after all and you don't want to waste it.

I hope that you have found this article useful and that you now understand the sort of things that you need to be considering when buying designer radiators.

These Are an Essential Part of Any Home Refurbishment

An acquaintance has almost by accident, become a successful property developer. It can be a dangerous business and around thirty years ago, I seem to remember many crashed.

But if you remember to start small and never overreach, or put all your eggs in one basket, it can still be very rewarding.

There are a couple of daytime TV shows following the fortunes of people that buy old properties at auction and do them up for rental or resale. The most successful are the ones that have a clear plan from the beginning of which way they are going.

For resale, the area and local values dictates the type of work that should be carried out. If it's a low value area with cheap properties, then just a simple makeover may be good enough.

But if the property is in a desirable area, a great deal of high quality work and finish should be achieved.

In these cases, great emphasis is often put into a luxury kitchen/diner and bathrooms. And my acquaintance, has also identified the need for quality plumbing and central heating.

He certainly doesn't cut corners when it comes to the radiators. Whether designer vertical radiators or ones that double up as mirrors, each room will have a special unique one.

Designer radiators have become an essential component of helping create a luxury property. For older people, like me, this is a revelation.

In decades gone by, no thought was put into radiator design as there simply wasn't any. If you didn't like those Victorian cast iron or flat panel steel, then tough; there wasn't anything else.

Nowadays, it really is a pleasure to look at all these new radiator designs and have some fun picking individual ones for every room in the home.

Next time my house is to be refurbished, the old spluttering boiler will be chucked out along with the noisy radiators. The pipes that run along the top of skirting boards, will also go.

New systems, fitted well, have very little pipework on display. This accentuates the attractiveness of the radiators.

For designer vertical radiators https://www.designerradiatorsdirect.co.uk/vertical-radiators

Don’t Forget Radiators When Redecorating Your Home

When you are updating your home, you should not think as radiators as an afterthought. They are a key player in anybody’s home nowadays. You should see them as items that enhance your home rather than hide them behind covers or a sofa.

When it is about Modern Radiators a little forward planning can ultimately save you money. Once the bare bones of the room have been finished off it is time to have a look at what you’ve got in the way of furniture.

You can then choose a heater that goes with all you have got and make it a piece that complements your interior design.

You will soon find out that manufacturers are becoming increasingly inventive as far as design and colour is concerned. Of course, their primary duty is to keep you warm and you need to find out which suits your home and heating requirements best.

If you should research now whilst the months are getting hotter, you may find that there are some good bargains to be had. It is also better to have your heating work done in the summer months as you won’t need it to keep warm.

All plumbers will tell you that you need to work out how many BTUs you will need for every room and then search for radiators that match your requirements. If you are in any doubt at all, please ask your plumber to work it out for you so you buy the right sized radiators.

It all depends on the metal that your heater is made of as to what size you need. If you should choose aluminium you may find that your radiator doesn’t have to be as large as any other model.

Nowadays if you don’t like the look of radiators, not even the modern ones, you could opt for skirting radiators that do not look obtrusive and they are space saving too.

At the end of the day you will choose a radiator that matches the style of your home, whether it is Victorian or modern.

If you are looking for Modern Radiators please visit https://www.designerradiatorsdirect.co.uk/designer-radiators/.

What Are the Benefits of Underfloor Heating?

Underfloor heating seems to be all the rage nowadays. Is it warranted? This is what we are going to explore during the course of this article. We are going to look at the benefits that you will get from using underfloor heating. It isn't suitable for every property, but if it's suitable for your property, it's one of the best things that you can do in terms of your central heating.

Benefit 1: Better Heat Distribution When Compared with Radiators

The best thing about underfloor heating is that it offers great heat distribution. This means that it warms your room evenly. With radiators, the part of the room with the radiator tends to be hotter than the part of the room without the radiator. You'll end up with colder patches in the room. 

This doesn't happen with underfloor heating as the heat distribution is much more even and it warms the room from the bottom to the top, giving it a much more comprehensive coverage.

Benefit 2: It Feels Amazing On Your Feet

Have you ever walked on underfloor heating? It is delightful. It is like getting a mini massage on your feet. If you're somebody like me, who suffers from Raynaud's syndrome, underfloor heating is just about the best thing you can do for your condition. It feels amazing. I'm sure it feels great for people that don't have Raynaud's too!

Oh, and there's nothing more luxurious than lying on your rug on your underfloor heating.  I have a big fluffy rug that looks a bit like a polar bear or fluffy sheep.  Lying on the rug that is like lying on a warm fluffy cloud. Seriously, nothing beats it on a cold winter's day. I love it!

Benefit 3: It's Cheaper Than Central Heating and Electric Radiators

Wet underfloor heating is cheaper than central heating and electric radiators. The underfloor heating mats, which use electricity, are more expensive to run than central heating, but cheaper than electric radiators. However, the wet underfloor heating systems for the cheapest of all four options.

Because underfloor heating offers much better heat distribution, you don't need to use as much energy to keep your house warm. It is a fantastic invention made even better by the fact that it helps you to save money.

Benefit 4: It's Easy to Install

The wet underfloor heating systems tend to require a heating specialist to install them properly. But, the underfloor heating mats can be installed by anyone with just a decent amount of DIY knowledge. As long as you have a modicum of DIY knowledge and you know how to pick up your floor, all you need to do a slide the mats underneath and plug them into your electric system.

Benefit 5: It Makes Your House More Attractive to Buyers

If you want to sell your house at any point, the fact that it has underfloor heating will often be a selling point in the same respect that a nice new bathroom in the good selling point.

I hope that you now have a good understanding of why underfloor heating has become so popular and why it is a great addition to any household.