There has never been a greater necessity to reduce energy usage and cut down on heating costs than at this time. With increasing fuel bills, the ongoing depletion of fuel reserves, and concerns over greenhouse gas emissions, now is the time to look at making you home heating system as efficient as possible.
There are a number of actions that can be taken to reduce the amount of fuel necessary to heat a home. Included in these are - using an efficient boiler, insulation and lagging to exposed pipe work, and insulating loft space, roof voids and the cavity of twin leaf walls.
A further and often ignored option is the programming of the heating timer. This will normally need adjusting throughout the seasons of the year and during any absence from the home during holidays etc. Reducing a thermostat heat setting by just a couple of degrees will result in fuel savings that will accrue over the course of a year.
Many of the modern heat efficient designer radiators can also use energy more efficiently than conventional radiators and they deserve consideration.
This may seem a strange question (or statement), however another way to reduce heating costs can be to add additional radiators to a home. When it comes to radiators more can equate to less in terms of energy use and heating cost. Here is why.
The output of most boilers is considerably greater than that required to heat up a typical home central heating system. As a result, the boiler will be continually re-heating hot water (that is already at a suitable temperature) as it is returned from the radiators. This is inefficient and costly and sees the boiler’s extra capacity being unused (or misused) – this serves no practical purpose.
Since, in most cases, the total heat output of a property’s radiators should be either equal to or slightly greater than the output of the boiler, most properties can actually add extra radiators without requiring the boiler to work harder or burn more fuel. These extra radiators mean that there are further heat releasing and heat spreading points situated throughout the home and this reduces drafts, cold spots and convection currents. As a result the house feels warmer, gets warmer quicker and still uses a similar amount of fuel. The outcome is not necessarily a saving in fuel, but the production or more heat from the same level of energy usage.
How many radiators are required – and how many radiators your boiler can supply - is determined by doing the following.
Find out the heat output of your boiler (in kilowatts) and the total heat output of all your radiators (in kilowatts).
If you have spare capacity, i.e. your boiler’s output is greater than the combined output of all your radiators, then you have available capacity from your boiler to add some extra radiators. The extent of this free capacity will determine the number and size of additional radiators that can be added to the building.
If the property has radiators that are independently controlled by thermostats it should be born in mind that there will be times when some of these radiators will turn off independently of the others. I.e. they will not be using the boiler’s energy output (and are therefore excluded from the “output” formulae above).
When this happens it is a good idea to balance the boiler-versus-radiator heat output with this in mind. This can often be done so that the radiators have a capacity that may be 20% above that of the boiler, hence allowing for the frequent inactivity of some of the radiators.