Electric Towel Rail for Summer Use

foxtrot_mike

I have recently been told that using an Electric Towel rail in the summer to dry your bath towels is cheaper than keeping the central heating on to heat a single bathroom radiator.

Is there any proof in this fact as im looking to get a source to power such a device (that also works on the central heating) installed safely by a professional?

HappyMJ

I'd say it's quite expensive either way. Do you really need warm towels? Let's say you find a towel rail that consumes about 175W of electricity such as the Dimplex TRS175W then that would cost you at rates of 13p/kWh £200 per year to run but admittedly you would have nice warm towels at all times and a warm bathroom every time you needed to use it. It would help keep condensation problems away saving you from repainting more often than if you had no heating.

chris1973

hanging them outside to dry (or using a clothes airer if in a flat) is even cheaper.

a warm bathroom every time you needed to use it

Heated towel rails are perhaps the worst way of trying to heat a bathroom unless its the size of a wardrobe. Even a modern well insulated bathroom would 'leak' more than 175w worth of heat every hour just in ventilation alone, meaning that the 175w heated rail is doing nothing, and even more so if covered with a damp towel.

WestonDave

The sensible compromise is to have a towel radiator on your gas central heating system with an auxiliary electric element in it that you can turn on if you need it. We've got this set up - during the winter the radiator comes on with the heating (and is enough to heat the bathroom), during the summer when the heating is off we have the electric element wired into an immersion heater timer switch so we can have it on for an hour at a time to dry the towels etc.

Chrome towel rails are pretty poor for output - the white ones or if you have to have shiny metal look then the stainless steel ones are better for their size.