Those large chrome bathroom radiators, any good

Poppycat

Are those large chrome bathroom radiators any good I mean give off enough heat as they cover a small surface area?

Always fancied one in bathroom as we dont have room to hang towels properly

Our bathroom is quite cold too, small radiator and two external walls dont help. I have had the rad blead but doesn't give off too much heat

shown73

I wish someone would answer, I quite fancy one too, and as it happens, Focus are advertising one at half-price in their sale. £75 seems a bit of a bargain for a decent size one, but I'm not sure if they would be very effective with a couple of towels draped over them.
Trawled Ebay, and it would appear that there is a wide disparity in manufacturing standards with these things, specifically the thickness of chrome plating, and the type of base its applied to. Bummer if it went rusty after a short while, although Focus stuff should be pretty safe, I suppose.

Poppycat

Thats good point about the rust. Would prefer a good quality one that doesnt rust for many years

BobProperty

You should be able to find the heat output in the details. (and I'd be suspicious of ones that didn't show a heat output figure). Some of these products are towel warmers and not designed to put out much heat. Others can put out amounts of heat comparable to radiators, it just depends what you are looking for and checking the details.

Bob63

We have two in our bathrooms and don't regret installing them. Heat output is better from white ones, but chrome (which we have) do look much better.

Some real bargains on these radiators are to be had at Toolstation - http://www.toolstation.com - which is a company founded by the family that used to own Screwfix and then sold out to Kingfisher group. I managed to get a small towel radiator for £36 a while back. If you have the space there is also a fantastic looking, but huge 6ft tall, one on sale in Costco at the moment.

Mike

Miss_Behaving

Hi, we've just installed a 5ft chrome towel rail/radiator in our north facing bathroom. Not only does it look good but it's much more effective that our old radiator. It wasn't cheap though about £300 (after paying for valves and delivery to their store) from the Bathstore. I wouldn't however recommend Bathstore as they're a really hopeless bunch! Here's the link giving details of output etc... http://www.bathstore.com/_application/bathstore/products/heating/beta-plus-chrome/
I noticed some in B&Q the other week if that helps.

Bob63

Miss_Behaving wrote: »

Hi, we've just installed a 5ft chrome towel rail/radiator .... It wasn't cheap though about £300 (after paying for valves and delivery to their store) from the Bathstore.

I suppose it isn't helpful pointing out now that Toolstation's price is quite a lot less and they have a nice range of 5ft radiators

http://www.toolstation.com/shop/PlumbingHeating/TowelRadiators/d20/sd2672

Jonesya

We've got a chrome towel rail one, the fact you can get more towels on it makes it handy but covering it with towels does reduce the heat output, not sure it would be up to heating a particularly cold room. It's plumbed into the central heating but it's also got an electric heater element fitted which is fed via a timer so it still dries the towels during summer months when the CH doesn't come on.

debbie42

I've got two electric ones in two rooms. They are fine for heating and hanging towels, and look good, but would be useless at heating the (largeish) rooms. Both rooms have a central heating radiator in as well.

adandem

We have one, I think the size is 1100x600. We have a bathroom which is approx. 8feet sqaure and it's always nice and warm, even with a tiled floor. It's great for drying the towels too. It's not top end (it cost about £120) but there are no signs of rust.

Screwfix sometimes have them on offer. I found the curved radiators better for bath towels too.

fas3robinj

When I fitted a radiator in my bathroom I searched for a website that could helped me calculate the rooms heat requirements. Type in 'BTU room calculator' in google. There are lots of website with on line calculators you can use. Use one to calculate the required size.

This will give you a radiator heat output figure in British Thermal Units(BTU's) or 'Watts' needed for the room bathroom. Check several web sites. Some calculators are more sophisticated than others. Then buy a radiator with an output a little bit bigger than you calculate(just to be sure).

I needed a 2600 BTU (720Watt) output. Most of them were too small. Managed to find a tall one that had a 2700 BTU output ....Now my bathroom is roasting :j:j:j. Good luck with the project!!!