Any recommendations for a particular type/brand of wall mounted electric radiator?
Myrtleboone
| Posted in Green Products and Materials on
Is their a particular brand of wall mounted electric radiators that tend to be more efficient at distributing warm air into a room as compared to traditional floor mounted types? Thanks.
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Replies
Matthew,
Electric resistance heaters are all 100% efficient. You aren't going to find any efficiency differences between brands.
Certainly, but is there a brand/type that distributes the heat into the center of the room without the use if a fan. I've read about natural convection versus radiant and wonder which performs better in a bedroom and bathroom setting?
We use Convectair electric heaters regularly.
Radiant cove heaters (any brand) work pretty well from a comfort point of view, and are directional, pointing downward toward the center of the room. Since they heat the objects/humans, not the air, they're pretty decent for heating intermittent-use rooms with reasonable comfort at low temp. If you're heating the room to a thermostatically controlled temp and keeping it at temp there are no energy savings, but there is a comfort factor over electric baseboards, etc.
By heating the objects at the floor level it makes THEM the convection-heater surfaces that heat the room air, and it's more comfortable to sit on a 72F chair/couch at a 73F desk in a 65F room than on a 68F couch in a 70F room, where all of the radiating/convecting surfaces are a 120F strip along a wall. It's not the same cush-factor of radiant floors/ceilings, but you can still get more comfort at a lower room temp than with most other low-cost resistance heating options. Heating the air is the LAST thing you want to do- heat the humans first! You want to distribute the heat, not distribute heated air.
In bathrooms low voltage radiant floors are far more comfortable to bare feet than radiant coves or baseboards, etc, but in bedrooms a radiant coves are much cheaper option, and still pretty cushy.
If it has to be a baseboard, oil-filled convecting baseboards are far more comfortable than fin-tube baseboard or any type of heater that uses a blower.
If you run the same room temperatures, they will all consume the same number of kilowatt-hours, but you will be more comfortable with cove radiators, radiant floor mats, and oil-filled baseboard convectors.