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Infrared heating panels

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13 Dec 2024
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Hello.

I am thinking of getting Infrared heating panels. The flat in which I am in does not have gas.
I have storage heaters and they are not energy efficient and very costly.
Would love to know if anyone out there has Infrared heating panels? Are they any good?

Thank you
 
Are you running your storage heaters on an “economy 7” type tariff?

When are you in the flat and needing heating? I.e. are you out at work during the day or not?

How old is the flat?

The radiant panels have two main disadvantages. Firstly, they don’t store heat, so they can’t take advantage of an “economy 7” low-cost tariff. Secondly, by their nature you will feel like you’re being sunburnt on one side of your face and frozen on the other.
 
The use of inferred to allow back-ground heat to be lower is a good idea, but not for the only heating. Remember, inferred will pass through glass so don't aim at windows.
 
Are you turning the storage heater output knob down last thing at night And opening when u come home ?
 
All electric heaters are 100% efficient, save for any energy they use for fans/lights/making noises/bluetooth/wi-fi.
 
All electric heaters are 100% efficient, save for any energy they use for fans/lights/making noises/bluetooth/wi-fi.
Unless talking about heat pumps, and inferred can pass through glass, so if aimed in the wrong direction, the heat can be lost, but the big problem with inferred is it does not heat the air, so you can't use a standard thermostat to control them.

So the way around the control problem is to use other forms of heating to heat the air to a set back-ground level, so combined with the inferred it feels correct.
 
One of the workshops I spent lots of time in had a pair of 3 bar IR heaters, mounted each side of the central vertical roof truss timber. Essentially the only position for the work to take place was directly under them, in the winter it was fu.. fu.. fu.. very cold. As I had to book my time to jobs I asked for a job number to alter the heating arrangements, it turns out the owner and his son installed the heaters just the previous year "and there is nothing wrong with them where they are" I moved them 3m each way anyway (the space was 6m wide) and booked the time to the work jobs.

Additionally I used a 1KW panel heater under the bench which tended to warm the work a little.
 
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All electric heaters are 100% efficient, save for any energy they use for fans/lights/making noises/bluetooth/wi-fi.
Define efficiency? To me, it is how much heating is required to heat and maintain the required temperature over a given length of time. How efficient each heater is, will vary as the length of time changes.

So the room has heat loss, this will increase the longer the room is heated, not linear but more logarithmic so hard to quantify the loss. But a room which takes 2 hours to heat will have more losses as one, which takes 15 minutes, to heat. So the faster it can heat the room, the better.

The fabric of the room and things in the room will absorb the heat, and will release it after the room is no longer being heated, also the walls are often colder than the room, so moving air to heat the walls can be counterproductive, with more energy leaving by the windows. So use of a fan is a double edge thing, it gets heat into the room faster but can also assist it leaving the room.

So the best heating for one room may be an oil filled radiator giving a constant output of heat, but the fan heater, or inferred, may be better for another room, and the time the room is required for matters.

I made a mistake fitting underfloor heating in a wet room, one, the shower cooled the floor in a few seconds, and two it could take 2 hours to reheat, totally wrong heating for the room.

We see this with heat pumps, they are so slow getting a room to temperature unless the room needs heat for a long time, rather useless.

However, not talked to anyone where geo-fencing has really worked. It simply takes too long to heat the room. Most rooms take an hour to warm up, so geo-fencing needs to trigger 30 miles away to work. With mine nearly home before it kicks in. And of course you would need to work 30 miles from home.

Define a lifestyle and room, and one can give some sort of answer, likely work well in a kitchen. But I tend to work on near enough engineering.
 
I can remember waaaaay back to my college days and some rooms where angled IR panels were installed about 8-9ft from FFL and everyone had almost fried heads while their feet froze.
 
I'm sure that there must have been a few hypocaust fires, when the local fuel was particularly "sooty" and the slaves insufficiently diligent in cleaning, but that isn't what I meant.
 
I would say efficiency is a comparison of energy used to energy required to do the task being preformed. Loss of heat either before or after the room has been used is not the required task, so need to be reflected in the efficiency.

Not much one can do about the cooling down, so can see why that is ignored. However, at work we talk about the price of a match, that is what it costs to get an engine into steam before it can even travel one foot.

If we can heat a room to the required temperature in ½ hour using 3 kW, then using 1 kW it should take 1½ hours, but in reality it takes more like 2 hours, so the two heaters can not both have the same efficiency rating.
 
I see your point.

My position was maybe too narrowly confined.
Who am I kidding - it was.

They may, over a long period, emit the same amount of heat into a room, but the different hysteresis of a fan-heater and an oil-filled Dimplex, coupled with the nature of use of the room, the "natural" unheated ambient temperature, the predictability of the use, all of these mean that no one size fits all.
 

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