Choosing The Right Radiator For Your Home
Renovations

Choosing The Right Radiator For Your Home

If you’re looking for a new radiator, you must think carefully about which system actually suits your house and its décor. Choosing a radiator can be quite daunting because there is a huge range of designs and styles. Many different factors play a role in the decision-making process when looking for a new radiator.

Design Matters

There’s also the importance of choosing a radiator that can really add a chic element to your home. People appreciate a heated towel rail in the bathroom, and the fact they’re both stylish and functional makes them a must-have for the modern home.

For example, the heated towel rails displayed here show just how a beautiful heated towel rail can add a luxury aesthetic to your bathroom.

Gone are the days when radiators were a cumbersome and lacklustre part of your home. Thanks to designer radiators, radiators play a role in the design of your decor and might even be a positive talking point in your home.

How Powerful Should The Radiator Be?

There’s no point just going for the most powerful radiator if the room can be heated perfectly using one with less power. Without knowing the building’s heat demand, you won’t get far in finding the right heating system.

The heat requirement is determined with a heating load calculation. The standardised calculation method determines how much heat must be supplied to an individual room or a building to achieve the desired temperature and maintain it permanently.

Use the BTU system to work all this out. The BTU method tells you the wattage of the radiator needed for the chosen room to ensure that it’ll be heated comfortably and efficiently.

How much should I spend on a radiator?

How much you should spend on a radiator should be decided by what you need and where it’s going. Depending on the location and the circumstances, prices can be lower or higher. Likewise, no general statement can be made about the running costs.

In addition to fuel prices, there will be occasional maintenance required. 

What’s more, you should consider that there are some heat generators for which the effort is somewhat more extensive than for others. For example, wood heaters need to be cleaned more often than gas heaters. 

Overall, the financial outlay can also increase if a storage room has to be created in your own home first or, for example, if a gas connection has to be set up. In the latter case, you should also determine whether this is possible for your house in advance.

Choosing The Right Radiator For Your Home

Is a hybrid heating system perhaps the right solution for you?

Based on the types of heating mentioned so far, you have to choose one energy source: fossil or renewable. Both have their advantages, and that’s where hybrid heating capitalises well. The technical concept behind hybrid heating is trivalent or bivalent heating. Simply put, it just means that two energy sources are used. The most common is a solar burner heating system.

This system takes advantage of the combustion of gas, oil or wood. But solar thermal energy is used too, which can cover a large part of the hot water consumption. Likewise, a combination of three sources is conceivable if, for example, a water-bearing fireplace is added. 

Deciding between hot water and an air heating system

It’s not only the fuel that can be a factor in which heating system suits you best. There are other categories by which heating types can be distinguished, and the medium through which the thermal energy is distributed plays a decisive role. 

The heating process can be done using water or by using air. This distinction is particularly relevant in the case of central heating systems. Individual heaters or individual firing systems function differently in this respect. As the name suggests, they generate thermal energy for individual rooms, i.e. decentrally and directly. But what are the advantages of hot air and water heating systems?

Warm air heating

A warm air heating system distributes the thermal energy generated in a central boiler with warm air. The medium, in this case, is room air. The system uses the physical principle that warm air rises and cold air sinks. This gravity circulation is especially imperative in small systems. If the system is larger, the air is moved with the help of fans.

Hot water heating

In the United Kingdom, hot water heating tends to be the standard system. Unlike warm air heating, the heat-transferring medium is water, and the system’s heart is the boiler.

This heats the water. With the help of a circulating pump, the hot water reaches various radiators via a pipe system, where it can ensure the right room temperature.

In addition, various safety fittings ensure that changes in the volume of water due to temperature changes do not cause damage to the piping system or even the radiators.

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