Infrared4Homes – spreading the truth about Infrared heating!

Reputable Suppliers of Infrared Heating Panels

With so many companies out there selling infrared heating panels, it is hard to choose the make and model and even harder to believe some of the claims that have recently surfaced about this technology. Even though far infrared is relatively new in the UK, it has already become extremely popular – but this is nothing compared to mainland Europe though where infrared has been heating homes and businesses for decades.

Dozens of companies have entered this growing market and in our opinion some of the marketing materials they are putting out and their door-to-door selling agents are exaggerating the savings from the infrared heating technology, with some claiming that infrared can cut gas bills by 90%. While the technology is extremely efficient some of these numbers flying around are just too good to be true.

Some of the claims by these companies are saying infrared heating panels are 10 times more efficient than a gas boiler and 2.5 times more efficient than a ground source heat pump – this is unfortunately not true!

So on what basis are these companies creating these overzealous figures?

Efficiency of Infrared Heating Panels

As infrared heaters are powered by electricity, this means they are 100% efficient – so one unit of input of electricity produces one unit of heating output. The difference in infrared heating panels is that they heat surface rather than volume space like conventional convection heating (central heating, fan heaters, etc), which is why less output is required to provide ‘useful heat’.

This is the point that some companies are using to overestimate the models of heaters that they are trying to sell. They are stating for example that a 200watt heater can heat an average sized room of 10m² or equivalent to say a 3kW conventional electric fan heater.

Given the infrared heater has a typical range of about 2.5 meters, a 200watt panel is realistically not going to heat much more than a small closet room – still it will be about 60% more efficient than a like for like electric fan heater but not on a scale of 10:1.

On a new build or a retrofit property with insulated walls and roof space we recommend 50 – 60 watts per m² of heating output. If you have an older property that is partially insulated then you should take our heating requirements and upsize this to assume 75 watts per m². For period properties and old cottages you can increase the sizing requirements to 100 watts per m².

Sizing the rooms correctly for infrared heaters

Having said some of the energy saving claims from some companies don’t stack up – infrared really is a fantastic heating solution, particularly for off-gas properties, holiday homes, flats with electric heating – especially storage or panel heaters or where you are looking to replace the whole heating system as your current system approaches the end of its useful life.

In our opinion, if you already have an efficient gas central heating system in place, then don’t rip it out! You might want to use infrared as backup or supplementary heating system, but the energy savings are not going to be huge – especially since the price of mains gas is so much less than mains electricity. The price of gas relative to electricity is about a third of the size and this cancels out room/output sizing ratio.

If however you have cold rooms, that are under heated by your existing system or you have other rooms that would result in expensive plumbing then infrared is the perfect solution.

Herschel Infrared Heating Panels vs. others in the market

The Herschel brand is by far the most popular brand of infrared heating system for both for indoor and outdoor applications – they have been successful in the UK for a number of years, really since the technology made its way to our shores and some of the team, indeed helped launch it in the UK as far back as 2008.

This is why Infrared4homes has Herschel panels at the heart of our offer to the UK market. With years of experience of infrared heating and selling the Herschel brand we have a very comprehensive approach when helping consumer making the best choice.

While we can’t speak for other brands; we admit there are other heaters out there that are fantastic but some of them are being oversold to what they actually are.

If you would like to explore infrared heating panels for your home then why not come to Infrared4homes and get the best possible information so that you can make that informed choice that is best for you.

Popular Herschel Infrared panels