Infrared Heating Panels....Again!

Cardew

Spinneyman wrote: »

Hi, I'm new to the site. Not sure if this is still a live thread, but if so would appreciate any thoughts on my conundrum. We have a barn, approx 90 mtrs2 and a vaulted ceiling 4mtrs at its highest point. We've used it as a 'second home' mainly in the summer, but are now going to try to set it up as a holiday let. It has a woodburner (12kw) and a number of oil filled rads. This is OK for part of the year but not sufficient for cooler times. So will keep the woodburner and ditch the rads. But replace with what?

My current thoughts are radiant heat rather than convection. Maybe an infrared in the shower room?

But dont know how to heat the main room so guests are happy. Ceiling is now insulated and clad (rock wool). Two end gables are not outside walls. But the other two are outside walls and non insulated stud partition. We have gas in the main house but i'm guessing it would be very expensive to extend it? Considering radiant heaters, but best buys appear to be only in the states. Also considering IR rads, or maybe a mix of all?

As said above, to heat such a building will electricity will be very expensive and there is no cheap solution.

You might consider an air to air heat pump.

Bristol_Builder

Hi,
About me:
I’m a carpenter and ex site manager, interested in everything construction related.
My house is an 180 year old stone cottage in Northumberland, specification below:
Open plan kitchen/diner with open staircase leading up to lounge, which is also open to the staircase (theres no stud walls to separate any of these rooms or stairs).
Has a single bedroom, in an extension.
Has a bathroom downstairs off the dining area.
Ceiling height downstairs of 2.3m
Vaulted ceiling height of 4m to the apex upstairs.
Super insulated - Walls are 0.13W/m² Roof is 0.08W/m²
I will have whole house MVHR, bedroom excluded as we both like this room cool at night
I have cold air ducts from both ground floor FFL and 1st floor FFL to Apex, these are to draw cold air from the lower levels and mix it with warm air at the highest point of the building.
I will have a 100% ducted air stove boiler. Water 9Kw and 1.8kw to room
A 460L thermal store topped up with E7 as and when
Solar thermal panels
a buffer tank in the garden to cope with the stove running on cold weekends or hot summer days, size not yet selected. This will allow me to oversize the solar thermal panels a little.
NO GAS connection
NO Oil



I'm happy to have a range of heating systems
Currently thinking about having a large storage heater on the ground floor to keep the house at say 15 deg.
Ir heater in the bathroom and kitchen for the mornings whilst we are getting ready for work.
Wet RADs feed from the thermal store in the evenings, this could be be charged/heated from either E7, Solar thermal or the stove.

I am also considering Ir panels in the lounge, but I think the industry are using them completely wrong. They seem to suggest that we should use them with thermostats and try and heat the room. This is barmy! Might as well have a cheap convection heater, which will heat the air. When air is heated doesn't everything more or less absorb heat from air. So the furniture will get heated as will my plasterboard, oak flooring and so. Heating a room to 20 degrees with Ir seems crazy. Heating element type seems un-important if your aim is to heat everything in a room to 20 deg. All electric is more or less 100% efficient as people here have already stated. So if the aim is the same all electric types of heater should be equal, right? Also the surface temp of Ir heaters means they will cause the same convection dynamics as a radiator. Ok, slightly reduced due to the flat non fluted shape.

My reason for wanting Ir heaters is because traditional heating will warm my lounge when i might not want it heated. Also in the lounge we are thinking about having one as my wife likes it alot hotter than i do. Currently I have to strip down to boxers when I my wifes thinking about taking off here 2nd jumper.

I think keeping the house at 15ish via whatever means necessary and then topping up with stove Ir or wet rads when the need appears seems like a good way forward. Some evenings we wont go upstairs to the lounge until fairly late as we will be in the kitchen drinking lots of wine whilst cooking, then sitting down for dinner.

Also people seem to think that using wet rads on electric heated water is crazy. I don’t get this. If I use storage heaters and I charge them with lets say 20Kw, even the most efficient thermostatically controlled ones will only store 10Kw over a 24 hour period on the odd hot day. So a loss of 10Kw and a room hotter than I might want it. If I use my thermal store and only charge it with E7, then use that to run wet rads I would have to pay for the circulation pump at peak rates. Modern ones run on as low as 3-10watts so that’s negligible. The heat loss of my thermal store is about 2Kw, so by using my thermal store on spike hot days I could save 8Kw. British weather has quite a few of these. On cold days this system would cost the same as storage heaters plus the 3-10watts per hour for the pump. The reason for me having any storage heaters is that my thermal store is not large enough to cope with all the heating. But it should be ok for topping up the 5 degrees when needed.

So my reason for posting is I want Ir heaters as I say above to heat me for an hour or two, not to bring a room up to temperature. I think they should all be really low outputs, but run constantly whilst I’m in the room. Here lies my problem, I want Ir heaters with an adjustable output and I cant find any light weight ones for ceiling mounting. All the calculations by manufacturers are based on the idea of heating items and then air by items and a thermostat switching them on and off. I want to be able to adjust the output so I can tailor it to my wifes requirements. It seems amazing that I can heat her chair and not mine in the lounge.

I posted everything I could think of regarding my house so you could all poke holes in my system, prior to me finishing it. This way if you have valid points I will adjust my house.

Richie-from-the-Boro

It seems amazing that I can heat her chair and not mine in the lounge

Not to me, I've long advocated ceiling [expensive & impractical in a domestic setting] and the fact that the individual human 'target / product' [emissivity] absorbs most middle / far-infra. You have only to go back to the 60's and 70's when we had no bathrooms or central heating, we knocked down the old 'lean-to's' on the back of the house and built proper brick bathrooms. Still no commonplace CH, so we installed the old ceiling light & red element 700+ watts heat it quickly warmed the kids, towels and even the 'cast' bath under the arc, but left other areas of the room cold.

You can buy all manner of effective far-infra ceiling panels of variable physical size and wattage from very black to ceiling white. I've still got a black ceramic 3x3' remote control panel I bought in the early 80's, its done a lot of hours over the years and is still good. Of course the lazy-bonus of sitting on your arras to switch up down etc without getting out of your chair was a cathedral size bonus, or just set 'stat' and timer and let it do its pre-set thing.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Night store heating & E7.

20Kw, even the most efficient thermostatically controlled ones will only store 10Kw over a 24 hour period on the odd hot day.

A brick is a brick :

- each brick will hold 1.48kWh of cheap heat and depending on insulation will release it over the next 17 hours
- each of the (up to 4) vertical 850W elements sits in the gap between 4 of these bricks
- each brick is 230x190x50 - if you divide the total amount of heat you want by 1.48 you know how much stored heat you need
- a NSH tin comes in 4 varieties up to a 16 bricker 16 x 1.48kW = 23.8kWh of stored heat
- equivalent to a 1.4kW heater permanently supplying 'cheap electrical background heat' 24 not 17 hours per day

If its out of heat by say 5 / 8. / 10/ pm then its because you have under specified the tin storage needs and need more bricks or you have the damper open in which case it is not good radiative but bad convective.

Placement of a NSH should where aesthetically possible should be direct-line to your wife, the benefit of radiated direct heat is much the same as [felt] IR heat. Your keeping the living area at say 15°C is from my point of view medically unsafe and socially unreasonable, assuming you mean while 'you are in' the house - but its your house - if you meant only when your out of the dwelling that's a different issue. Best of luck !

HVR

Having seen the various arguments on why or why not IR heating is good/efficient/cheap etc. I was surprised that the one o two main deciding factors (in my opinion) has not really been touched.

My background: DIY.

I am aware of the arguments of more efficient and cheaper running costs when it comes to IR heating however that was not nearly my main concern. However, when it does come to cost (not taking into account initial setup costs) it does make sense that solar panels could be useful towards offsetting heating from an electrical source, albeit not much. The same cannot be said when it comes to heating with gas (i.e. something that provides me with small amounts of free gas). I have so far only placed IR panels in my kitchen but have already removed several radiators to be replaced with IR panels as I progress through the house. I am planning on eventually only using my boiler for hot water.

My reasons for making this change are as follows:

1. Gas CH may cost less than electricity, however, the amount of money time and nuisance that comes with having water pipes running throughout the house far outweighs the potential saving that might be made by using gas. Surely events like burst or leaking pipes (i.e. maintenance) play a role in evaluating or comparing different types of heating. The cost involved in having your boiler serviced, getting leaks repaired, replacing rotten joists and all the possible risks of having water pipes throughout the house not to mention disrupting floors, tiles etc. I have done up a few properties now and one common issue in all cases is damaged floor boards (for gaining access) and general damage due to CH pipe leaks. Yes, a properly done job will have less leaks, but no job will last forever and you will eventually need to lift those boards or be the unfortunate buyer to find a pipe had been leaking slowly for months causing a joist to rot.

2. Heaters that are mounted to walls (radiators) or placed on the floor (other electric heaters) are always in the way. Radiators in particular can remove a complete wall from the room when it comes to arranging furniture (unless you are happy for one piece of furniture to completely cover the radiator being itself heated to death and wasting the heat it produces).

3. Not being able to fully control the heat in individual rooms. Yes you can turn a radiator down but later on it is too cold and needs to be turned up, and the pipes to and from this radiator still gets heated up. People prefer different temperatures, especially in bedrooms and at night - getting this right with a flow control on a radiator can take some time.

Why does an electric ceiling mounted heater work in these instances. And for obvious reasons, an IR panel is the only option if you want to mount it to the ceiling:

1. It will not leak. If it stops working, it can be replaced without a lot of disruption. Thermostats are mostly wireless so need no extra wiring if it needs to be moved. There is no annual service. No bleeding of radiators, or painting or trying to get the paint brush in behind it or painting the thing itself. Then there is the issue of cold surfaces onto which warm humid air condenses, but I think this is known by most.

2. Ceiling mounted panels are completely out of the way and are almost unnoticeable on a white ceiling. Children and pets are not at risk of touching hot surfaces. The space once occupied by the radiator is now free wall space.

3. Individual rooms can each have their own panel with wireless thermostat. Each person can set the actual temp of the room they occupy.

The cost of a brand new boiler is not cheap and replacing one is certainly not a normal DIY job. The initial costs of IR panels, in my opinion, can be quite high but removing a lot of the issues of CH, as an example, is definitely worth it.

We spend a lot of time talking about saving money on energy in the form of gas but the maintenance costs of gas should not be overlooked.

I am I the process of doing up a Victorian property and have already removed several radiators to be replaced by panels. If I pay the same in energy or even slightly more, I will still be left pleased when I enjoy the benefits of out of the way, inexpensive to maintain heating panels. Time is also money and often they rank equally when you are trying to save.

Cardew

HVR wrote: »

Why does an electric ceiling mounted heater work in these instances. And for obvious reasons, an IR panel is the only option if you want to mount it to the ceiling:

Welcome to the forum.

Why can't any radiant heater be ceiling mounted?

Your argument above seems to be that electrical heating is better than gas, and you dismiss the cost per kWh advantage of gas on the flimsiest grounds - water pipes etc.

Even if your arguments for electrical heating were valid, which I personally don't accept, I cannot see the why your emphasis is on IR heating and not other forms of electrical heating.

Most of the objections to those promoting IR heating is that it is marketed on the false premise that IR is more efficient at producing heat than other electrical heating; and it ain't.

Secondly the prices for some over-hyped IR panels are eye watering. If someone wants to test 'your' theory they should get a few cheap(costing £tens) IR heaters and try them.

I am I the process of doing up a Victorian property and have already removed several radiators to be replaced by panels. If I pay the same in energy or even slightly more, I will still be left pleased when I enjoy the benefits of out of the way, inexpensive to maintain heating panels.

You won't pay the same in energy, gas is currently about a quarter of the price of electricity. You seem to accept that fact by intending to keep your gas boiler for hot water.

lstar337

HVR wrote: »

I have so far only placed IR panels in my kitchen but have already removed several radiators to be replaced with IR panels as I progress through the house. I am planning on eventually only using my boiler for hot water.

Enjoy your new expensive heating system.

IsleofLewis

Hi
I have just moved in to a super insulated house but which only has leccy panel heaters, though with timers and thermostats of a sort (slider control for heat output). Immersion heaters in water tank. No gas.
Our last house had an air source heat pump with under floor heating which was a pain. It fairly regularly came up with an error code and shut down until manually reset (ie ice detected but there never was) But until the floor got cold you didn't usually notice which would be the next day, reset it, then it would take a day to heat up again, cold in the meantime. So as a sole source of heat I would not want that again! Asked two qualified fitters for a warning buzzer for when it went off but never materialised.
This new house has a small stream I could maybe use a water source heat pump from, or I could fit superduper storage heaters and have economy 7.
The last few weeks, even on 12 deg C max days outside, the house has been 21 inside with heating off the whole time.
We have an induction hob/cooker and a washing machine that needs pressing the start button and no timer so neither any good for E7.
Infra red has been recommended instead of "costly to run" conventional panel heaters which is why I found this thread.
So, accepting the fact that IR are no more efficient than any other electric heater, if in winter I needed 10KW of heat and I replaced 10KW of normal panel heaters with 10KW of IR heaters the house would be as warm? Or would that depend on what was in it, wall construction etc? So if there were big thick solid stone walls and fireplace for instance the IR would be more effective at heating the air? But empty rooms and thin stud walls not so good?
If I put a PIR operated IR heater next to the TV at ground level aimed at the sofa it would be comfy when seated (and awake!) but the sofa would block all the IR to the room behind?
IR heaters in the kitchen kick board would give warm toes only?
So I might try a sofa aimed IR panel, and a mirror version in the bathroom rather than fitting the house out with storage heaters as a first step, but how can I work out having only just moved in if storage heaters will save me money long term without just sitting tight and maybe being chilly for a year research period?!

Richie-from-the-Boro

Domestic IR warms objects convection warms air, I'm assuming from your post that your EPC is 'A' or 'A+' in which case your existing ultra slim panel 2kW[+] timer and thermostat conventional panel heaters should take care of your winter needs.

Don't read as fact fancy marketing cons such as 'infra red instead of "costly to run" conventional panel heaters' ! .. .. the 'gap' you need to fill is the difference between where you currently are and where you need to eventually be and you have no idea of where you are, suck it and see for your first seasonal cycle and then make informed decisions. Best of luck.



The graphic above is true but only while you are in the angle of the middle/far beam. Your example of the ground level IR pointed at you on the sofa is true where the beam touches an object it releases the heat everything behind it will be cold if its outside the beam eventually of course both yourself and the sofa will become a radiator in your own right and release heat. Water for example will absorb FIR particularly well, your skin is 80% water. We as a nation only turned away from the instant benefits of directional IR in the late 60's because dirt cheap fossil fuels meant full central heating became an option, so it wasn't technology it was just cheap coal that heats air.

A better more accurate word to use is visible, at this part of the visible middle / far spectrum its about right as is the case with the sun on a human body.

perrierjouet

Hi everyone

I am another one with a heating conundrum.

Background:
In December 2016 we moved into a four bed house. Our son is disabled and we chose this property because it is almost like two flats. He has a self contained area (living room, kitchen, bath and bed) downstairs. We have the same upstairs. Additionally, there are two further bedrooms downstairs, hall and staircase. All rooms are on average 4m x 4m, living room (both) 8m x 6m, kitchen 4m x 10m (upstairs).

We are south west facing and get the sun from around 10am until sunset. We have glass along the entire front of the southwest aspect. I think it has some kind of thermal property as the glass is tinted blue and in the evening the reflection from the internal lights is white and then another layer of orange. I’ve not seen this before in double glazing in our homes. There is an insulated render on the walls externally but we do seem to have an uninsulated flat roof – we are looking at getting this resolved.

The house gets pretty hot when the sun is out, even if the air is cold outside.

We have no central heating at all. When we moved in we bought some Glen Dimplex Convection Heaters 2KW as a stop gap as we are having the downstairs area reconfigured so it is more accessible for our son. I understand the principle that all heaters are 100% efficient as they turn all the energy into heat but I believe these heaters were expensive to run especially as my husband was running around turning them off with a panicked look in his eyes.

So we need to make a decision on what to install.

We are only able to fit an electric system and don’t want a wet system due to the cost and disruption to the property and I don’t want pipes everywhere. Due to my son’s disability he and I are home pretty much 24/7.

We have only one electricity company (JEC) who have a mind field of tarrifs including E7, E20, E20+ and comfort. All the tariffs allow them to charge peak rate at various times at their discretion (including when you are likely to be needing more electricity, ie, tea time! and you can only have heaters which they approve (and probably sell) plus some need a dedicated supply circuit. I am sceptical that they will provide an unbiased recommendation seeing as its not in their interest for us to use less electricity.

The JEC have recommended:
Dimplex Quantum plus some other Dimplex products (PLX, XLSN, Monterey, Duo, Q-Rad)
Fisher Future Heat – no specific product
EcoSave by the Electric Heating Company

Our building project manager has given us a brochure on Intelli Heat Smart Electric Radiators.

We like the idea of Infrared – we know it’s not everyone’s taste but we actually quite like the ceiling fixings and the information looks promising.

We also have a Stovax in both living rooms which is brilliant.

Anyway – I have read every post on this thread and countless others. I don’t feel I can trust the marketing blurb and claims in brochures so I am hoping that someone will have some experience of the systems recommended to us and/or infrared. Or other systems. Has anyone gone Infrared and liked it? Bills reduced?

In addition, Hubbie is talking about getting a heat pump for the hot water (although the post about the COP being pretty rubbish was alarming) plus due to our location solar panels and a Tesla battery so we can be off grid for summer. (We stopped using the Glen’s in early April and have not needed any heating so far). We used just over 4,686 units from 2 April to 2 Oct.

Thanks for reading this long post and I’m very grateful for any advice.

Thanks
Emma