What size electric panel heaters?

GAD0161

My first post so hope it is in the right place. We live in a 2 bed purpose built (about 1964) flat, 1st floor and double glazed. The flat seems well insulated and being on the first floor (flats above and below and to the side) helps. While the flat doesn't get really cold we want to get rid of the 3 clunky old storage heaters which are difficult to control and seem to be expensive (even with economy 7). They were probably fitted when the flat only had single glazing and if anything pump out too much heat for the size of the rooms and we end up having to open windows to cool the place down!

We are going to go for electric panel heaters with timers for the living room and 2 bedrooms (no gas so this is not an option) and were wondering if someone could advise what size we would need. My thoughts were that the following would do the job:

Living room: 1.5 or 2 kwh (4.5m x 4m floorspace, 2.4 m high, large south facing double glazed window measuring 2m x 2.5m).
Bedrooms: 0.5 or 0.75 kwh (4m x 3m floorspace, 2.4 m high, north facing double glazed windows measuring 2.5 x 1.25m).

Stress that these are based on pure guesswork with no scientific or technical underpinning at all! I'm not even sure if we are asking the right questions or giving the right info to enable anyone to give us an answer. It just seems a bit wasteful at the moment as we either get too much heat pumped out, or it's pumped out when we don't need it (we are out at work all day, 3 adults and no kids) plus when we do switch it off we can't get heat when we occasionally do need it. I've never had all electric heating before so I just want something we can control a bit better and isn't going to cost a fortune to install or run.

Thank you.

anthonykeates

Panel heaters should be fairly cheap to install but they're not cheap to run, as peak electric is expensive. Have a look at this link to work out the rating required for the rooms http://www.dimplex.co.uk/corporate_information/how_much_heat_do_i_need.htm

Cardew

It really doesn't matter too much on the size(rating) as they are thermostatically controlled.

Even if, say, 1kW was sufficient to heat a very small room, it would do no harm to have a higher wattage heater. The advantage of the latter would be that it brings a cold room up to the required temperature faster.

If it takes xx kWhs of heat(Btus) to warm a room, it will cost the same if you have a 1kW or 3kW heater. The latter will run for one third of the time in shorter bursts.

GAD0161

Thank you both for your helpful replies. Think I'll go for 3kwh in the living room and 1kwh in the bedrooms as the differences in purchase price compared to the heaters I was planning buying isn't great.

200

3 killowats for the living room sounds ridicoulous,
with got a 2000 watt heater in our living room so it heats up quickesr (ch is slow)
and it already can get hot a 3 killowat and and its too much, anyway thermostats
arent that fatastic as they rarely work well, youll have the same proiblem,
2 kwh would be more sensible.