Infra red heating does not work. I've fitted plenty of systems for customers over the years and every single one has been ripped out and replaced with proper heating.
The end of wet central heating?
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Isn't asbestos from nature? 
Yeah - and gamma rays and ebola.
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Is that for the heating of the tops of people's heads, the floor, or what?
Kind Regards, John
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OMG. What a load of twaddle! There is a claim on the news page that the panels heat with zero CO2 footprint. (Apparently no CO2 comes out of the panel.) This makes them the greenest thing ever. In 30 seconds I saw more dubious copy that I would have believed possible.
(The information on the Carbon Creations Ltd company that I searched for also made me wonder. Someone else should do a search and see if they find the same.)
(The information on the Carbon Creations Ltd company that I searched for also made me wonder. Someone else should do a search and see if they find the same.)
Quite so - just like the zero CO2 footprint of electric cars,or hydrogen-fuelled cars etc. (in the minds of those who don't think to wonder where the electricity or hydrogen came from!).
I've been fairly close to some of these exercise in the past, and it seems not uncommon that the business(wo)men concerned actually genuinely believe in their products (often passionately so), having been totally taken in by cranky quasi-scientists who have convinced them that there is a tremendous opportunity to be (legitimately) exploited.
Kind Regards, John
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Wet central heating may or may not last. But Gas Powered Wet Heating will certainly not last till I retire.
At the moment the most likely contender is AirSource Pumps, once more and more homes have their own microgeneration setups whether that be solar/small wind turbines etc, electricity will be more relied on than ever as the gas cant keep being used a the rate we use it.
Most good arsource heatpumps are rated about 350 - 400% efficient now (under test circumstances) so make electrical use of these on par with gas costs and much cheaper than oil/LPG fired heating. With modern insulation most semidetached houses would only require 10 - 15kw at most.
But as far as the infrared heating goes, its not a practical alternative as said. It will do the same for your heating billes as wearing snowboarding gear in the house will. You'll save money but hte house will be cold.
You only get out what you put in. Even the 400% efficient air scource pump isnt working by magic, you are using 10 units of electricity to 40 units of eat energy out of the atmosphere (essentially just transferring heat from outside to inside) not making it up from nothing.
At the moment the most likely contender is AirSource Pumps, once more and more homes have their own microgeneration setups whether that be solar/small wind turbines etc, electricity will be more relied on than ever as the gas cant keep being used a the rate we use it.
Most good arsource heatpumps are rated about 350 - 400% efficient now (under test circumstances) so make electrical use of these on par with gas costs and much cheaper than oil/LPG fired heating. With modern insulation most semidetached houses would only require 10 - 15kw at most.
But as far as the infrared heating goes, its not a practical alternative as said. It will do the same for your heating billes as wearing snowboarding gear in the house will. You'll save money but hte house will be cold.
You only get out what you put in. Even the 400% efficient air scource pump isnt working by magic, you are using 10 units of electricity to 40 units of eat energy out of the atmosphere (essentially just transferring heat from outside to inside) not making it up from nothing.
One of my customers has ground source heating. It's brilliant. Once you've got over the initial cost it really is a great alternative. He's out in the sticks where there is no gas, so makes a real saving.
I agree with you in concept but, even if you are very young, I suspect that you may be being a bit optimistic about timescales (unless, perhaps, you are only talking about new builds)!
Indeed. As I've observed before, one has to be of a certain again to remember what it was like when most of us relied on essentially radiant heating. The advent of domestic CH seemed to be like unimaginable magic - at last we could move around a warm room/house, rather than huddle around a heat source with very hot fronts and cold backs!
Kind Regards, John
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There are three ways of moving heat energy conduction, radiation and convention simple school boy physics.
But we have for many years miss labelled devices calling a convection device a radiator. OK a small amount is radiated but most of the heat leaves the radiator by convection and by the very nature of convection heat will not travel down.
Attempts at under floor heating have tried to redress this problem but then we heat a second problem control. Heating a large mass which in turn liberates heat works well where we want heat 24/7.
In the heart of Winter under floor heating works well but Autumn and Spring is a problem as we want heat in the evening night and morning but not as the day warms up.
Radiated heat is however instant and so you have have heat just where you want it and just when you want it so although in the main electric it can still work out cheaper where a room requires heat for a short time. The Church is a good example.
But again control is the major problem. Any standard thermostat measures air temperature and radiated heat does not heat the air. Also the temperature of the radiating device is critical so you can't vary the temperature of the radiator neither can you use a mark/space ratio it has to be on all the time.
So in the days of the bar heater we had 4 bars and we could select 1, 2, 3, or 4 bars. But nothing in between. Nothing has changed the heat is on all the time no cycling possible and it has a fixed number of outputs not inferentially variable as with most other systems.
Clothing is another problem. Wear black overalls or white overalls and the heat absorbed is very different. Great at a funeral not so good for a wedding.
Using infrared as part of an integrated system can work. But except for garages where doors are opened regularly losing hot air and Churches where heat is only required for half and hour infrared it rather useless on it's own. Putting it simple we just can't control it.
I know many would likely think the idea of tungsten lighting as a means of heating is daft but I have installed tungsten lighting in shops with no other form of heating all they had was air conditioning units to remove excess heat.
In Chester the MANWEB building was suppose to be ground breaking where all the heat came from the florescent lighting built in the 1970's it won awards for the system lights were never turned off even at night to ensure building was kept at the working temperature. The radiated heat from the florescent was not as much as tungsten but it was claimed it was enough.
About 5 years ago it was reduced to a pile of rubble theroy was great practice it simply did not work.
If we look back at the central heating boom it was not the use of a central boiler or even thermostatic control which made central heating so good. I was simply the drawing of combustion air from outside the building and returning combustion produces to outside the building. Had we installed balanced flues to our coal fires then we would not need central heating.
As central heating progressed we realised we could install thermostats and so reduce costs. With started with a central thermostat which is still used with hot air systems this single device controlling the whole of the house means we can use technology like HIVE to switch it all on and off as required even when not in the house. But unless living in a 1970's open plan house with no doors on the rooms we are better off being able to control the temperature of each room even if supplied from a central heating unit.
Water works well at distributing heat through the house. At first we used simple wax operated thermostatic radiator valves but today we have progressed to WiFi units which not only controls the temperature but also the time when each room is heated. Living rooms will likely turn off over night and only the bedroom is heated and in the day the reverse is true and no heat is wasted on the bedroom.
If one compares a PIR activated with computer memory WiFi controlled thermostatic radiator valve radiator system with a PIR activated infrared out door compensated system using computer generated information as on how many panels are required then not sure which would fair better?
In both cases the computer plays a central role in working out which rooms to heat and when. My sons system even has the intruder alarm in the system once set the temperature is set very low.
However question is with the infrared system how does it maintain a background heat to stop any water freezing? Clearly it can't so with the infrared system one must also consider the cost of trace heating on all pipe work.
At the moment the pure infrared system is a pipe dream for most houses as is the Wifi controlled water system.
What the computer controlled system will cost I don't know. The MANWEB building shows how easy it is to make mistakes and clearly having a computer or even PLC running 24/7 must cost.
My sons cutting edge system seems great but my question is who will maintain it? The server in the loft and the 48 ports sound great to a Cisco systems trained guy but how many central heating engineers are trained to Cisco systems.
Getting a central heating guy to understand that all radiators must be thermostatic controlled to work the built in computer on a condensating boiler with anti-cycle software is hard enough. Getting them to understand systems which monitor outside temperature is really asking a lot.
So I am not saying infrared is not a workable system in fact I am saying it could work very well but what I am saying is controlling an infrared system is very complex and there is nothing in the link which suggests the writers have even cracked the basics never mind the complex system which would be required to run it in a controlled environment.
Using simple replacing LED lamps with tungsten with a simple central heating system may well result is a saving on heating power where the infrared from the bulb means the room thermostat can be changed form 20 to 18 degrees C and still have a acceptable comfort with temperature. But do the same with WiFi thermostatic radiator valves and no it would not work.
So it all depends on the system used.
Having said all that I still use LED lighting simply as I don't want to have to change bulbs every 5 minutes.
But we have for many years miss labelled devices calling a convection device a radiator. OK a small amount is radiated but most of the heat leaves the radiator by convection and by the very nature of convection heat will not travel down.
Attempts at under floor heating have tried to redress this problem but then we heat a second problem control. Heating a large mass which in turn liberates heat works well where we want heat 24/7.
In the heart of Winter under floor heating works well but Autumn and Spring is a problem as we want heat in the evening night and morning but not as the day warms up.
Radiated heat is however instant and so you have have heat just where you want it and just when you want it so although in the main electric it can still work out cheaper where a room requires heat for a short time. The Church is a good example.
But again control is the major problem. Any standard thermostat measures air temperature and radiated heat does not heat the air. Also the temperature of the radiating device is critical so you can't vary the temperature of the radiator neither can you use a mark/space ratio it has to be on all the time.
So in the days of the bar heater we had 4 bars and we could select 1, 2, 3, or 4 bars. But nothing in between. Nothing has changed the heat is on all the time no cycling possible and it has a fixed number of outputs not inferentially variable as with most other systems.
Clothing is another problem. Wear black overalls or white overalls and the heat absorbed is very different. Great at a funeral not so good for a wedding.
Using infrared as part of an integrated system can work. But except for garages where doors are opened regularly losing hot air and Churches where heat is only required for half and hour infrared it rather useless on it's own. Putting it simple we just can't control it.
I know many would likely think the idea of tungsten lighting as a means of heating is daft but I have installed tungsten lighting in shops with no other form of heating all they had was air conditioning units to remove excess heat.
In Chester the MANWEB building was suppose to be ground breaking where all the heat came from the florescent lighting built in the 1970's it won awards for the system lights were never turned off even at night to ensure building was kept at the working temperature. The radiated heat from the florescent was not as much as tungsten but it was claimed it was enough.
About 5 years ago it was reduced to a pile of rubble theroy was great practice it simply did not work.
If we look back at the central heating boom it was not the use of a central boiler or even thermostatic control which made central heating so good. I was simply the drawing of combustion air from outside the building and returning combustion produces to outside the building. Had we installed balanced flues to our coal fires then we would not need central heating.
As central heating progressed we realised we could install thermostats and so reduce costs. With started with a central thermostat which is still used with hot air systems this single device controlling the whole of the house means we can use technology like HIVE to switch it all on and off as required even when not in the house. But unless living in a 1970's open plan house with no doors on the rooms we are better off being able to control the temperature of each room even if supplied from a central heating unit.
Water works well at distributing heat through the house. At first we used simple wax operated thermostatic radiator valves but today we have progressed to WiFi units which not only controls the temperature but also the time when each room is heated. Living rooms will likely turn off over night and only the bedroom is heated and in the day the reverse is true and no heat is wasted on the bedroom.
If one compares a PIR activated with computer memory WiFi controlled thermostatic radiator valve radiator system with a PIR activated infrared out door compensated system using computer generated information as on how many panels are required then not sure which would fair better?
In both cases the computer plays a central role in working out which rooms to heat and when. My sons system even has the intruder alarm in the system once set the temperature is set very low.
However question is with the infrared system how does it maintain a background heat to stop any water freezing? Clearly it can't so with the infrared system one must also consider the cost of trace heating on all pipe work.
At the moment the pure infrared system is a pipe dream for most houses as is the Wifi controlled water system.
What the computer controlled system will cost I don't know. The MANWEB building shows how easy it is to make mistakes and clearly having a computer or even PLC running 24/7 must cost.
My sons cutting edge system seems great but my question is who will maintain it? The server in the loft and the 48 ports sound great to a Cisco systems trained guy but how many central heating engineers are trained to Cisco systems.
Getting a central heating guy to understand that all radiators must be thermostatic controlled to work the built in computer on a condensating boiler with anti-cycle software is hard enough. Getting them to understand systems which monitor outside temperature is really asking a lot.
So I am not saying infrared is not a workable system in fact I am saying it could work very well but what I am saying is controlling an infrared system is very complex and there is nothing in the link which suggests the writers have even cracked the basics never mind the complex system which would be required to run it in a controlled environment.
Using simple replacing LED lamps with tungsten with a simple central heating system may well result is a saving on heating power where the infrared from the bulb means the room thermostat can be changed form 20 to 18 degrees C and still have a acceptable comfort with temperature. But do the same with WiFi thermostatic radiator valves and no it would not work.
So it all depends on the system used.
Having said all that I still use LED lighting simply as I don't want to have to change bulbs every 5 minutes.
Excellent posting from Eric.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I second that, the experimental infrared system I experienced was aimed at increasing productivity for workers in a controlled chill environment.
The panels did enable to operatives to endure the cold for a longer time however there were too many problems for the project to come to fruition.
The panels did enable to operatives to endure the cold for a longer time however there were too many problems for the project to come to fruition.
I don’t doubt that there are some valid applications for radiant heating, but I think we need to keep in touch with what we’re actually talking about - which has to obey the laws of physics, not those of magic!
If, in a domestic setting, we use less energy for heating a given building, then we are doing less heating, so be may have to modify our expectations. It may, of course, be that other forms of heating unnecessarily waste heat/energy (by heating unnecessary things/places and/or for longer periods than necessary), but when it comes to issues like the difference between heating ‘just people’ and heating the air in a building, then people need to understand, and accept, that they aren’t “getting something for nothing” (which the laws of physics will not allow) but, rather, that the their energy costs are reduced because they have, at least in some senses, a ‘colder house’ (e.g. in terms of air temperature). Some may be happy with that, which is fine, but there will clearly be some reductions in temperature, somewhere (and/or at some points in time), if less energy is being used.
Kind Regards, John
Lamb chops spring to mind...
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