Case Study 04

If You DON'T Want To Save £1,424 A Year On Heating, Stop Reading Now.

Harry, one of our more recent customers, saved a massive amount of money by switching to infrared heating. He’s kindly let us use his home’s floor plan and the advice we gave him as part of this case study you’re about to read.

Room By Room

Different rooms have different needs, and when you go for zone-based heating it’s especially important to customise each room. We’ve calculated how much it’ll cost for you to run each style of heating for an hour, as well as narrowed down which style of IR heater will suit each room best.

The Maths

To figure out how many heaters you’ll need in a space, you need to calculate how many watts each room will need. We measure this by figuring out the volume of a room, then multiplying that volume by a specific number based on its insulation level.

You multiply by 25 for well insulated areas, 30 for moderately insulated areas, and 35 for poorly insulated areas.

Lounge

This room is where Harry spends most of his time, so it’s key that it feels comfortable. Luckily, a stylish 900W panel set over his sofa was all he needed for warmth.

Harry likes to have guests round, so it was especially important that his room look stylish. He went with a custom image panel with a print from one of his holidays. These have recently had an upgrade to ensure they’re Wi-Fi enabled, so he doesn’t have to sacrifice style for convenience.

The cost to run convection heaters in this space would be 40p per hour.

However, the cost to run infrared heaters in the lounge for the same time is 28p – a saving of 30%.

Kitchen Diner

Modern kitchen diners tend to be large, open plan spaces which are tricky to heat, and that’s why they need the largest number of watts.

However, kitchens can get really hot when you’re actually using them to cook food, so individual heaters are a great way to make sure you don’t waste energy. As soon as your oven hots up, you can turn the heater off with no fuss.

With a larger room area and a larger wattage requirement, it’s smart to split that requirement between multiple heaters. Harry chose two 900W panels, placing one in his kitchen area and one above his dining table. This meant he was using slightly more heat than required, but it ensured his room was well covered.

Our glass panels are particularly popular in kitchens due to their sleek modern looks, but a classic white panel will suit the vast majority of kitchen designs.

Convection heaters would cost 79p per hour here, but infrared only costs Harry 50p, so that’s a 37% saving!

Why IR Heating Will Save Your Money

All electric heating is 100% efficient, because of the first law of thermodynamics. If you put 100W of energy in, you get 100W of heat out. This is in comparison to gas or oil heaters, which tend to average out between 85%-90% efficiency. The reason IR heating can save you money is more because of how it feels, and because of how it uses radiant heat. A traditional convection heater will warm air in a cycle until the entire space is warm. A radiant heater will send waves of infrared heat directly to you, until you personally feel warm. This makes you feel comfortable quicker, so you won’t need to have your heater on for so long. It also lends itself to a more efficient ‘stop/start’ method of heating, turning the heater on when you feel cold, off when you warm up, and then back on if you feel chilly again.

Hallway

Odds are you won’t need a lot of heat for this space, as you’ll only ever really be passing through it. However, Harry liked the idea of coming home to a warm space.

One of our mirror panels would look especially stylish in this space, and would help the area feel larger. But for a space that would rarely be used, a Wi-Fi heater proved to be the best option for Harry. He could switch it on just before he comes home, then turn it off from his phone once he’d settled into his lounge for the evening.

Standard convection heaters would cost 16p per hour in the hallway. Infrared is only 11p though, so that’s another saving of 31.25%.

Bedrooms

Bedrooms typically want to be cooler than other rooms in the house, but they’ll still need a bit of heat to ensure your sleep is as uninterrupted.

Harry went with NXT Gen panels, as their range of extra sensor functions ensure they’re only on when they’re needed. Adaptive start in particular is helpful. Harry can set his goal temperature for when he wakes up, and the panel will switch on at the perfect time to ensure the room is warm enough first thing in the morning.

For the sake of simplicity we’ve lumped all three bedrooms together for one cost calculation. Convection would cost 95p per hour, but infrared is 63p, representing a 34% saving.

Bathrooms

Wait, you can’t use electric heating in a bathroom, can you? That’s yet another area where our infrared panels win without even having to try.

Harry had long given up on ever heating his small downstairs toilet. Unlike the rest of his home, it was quite poorly insulated, and the cost of upgrading it didn’t seem worth the amount of time spent in it. That meant everyone in the house more or less avoided using it.

A small mirror panel was a simple and cost-effective upgrade, and has really cut down on arguments about the upstairs bathroom!

Even our most basic models are at least IP44 rated, which means they’re splash proof and perfectly safe to use in a bathroom setting. Our mirror panels in particular are IP65 rated, making them even safer.

While you’ll have to hardwire your panel into the mains with a qualified electrician, this is an option that most other electric heaters simply cannot offer. Still, we’ve run the numbers for the sake of comparison.

Breaking Down The Costs

As you can see from our chart, IR heaters will use significantly fewer watts than a traditional convection heater.

Room Name

Lounge
Kitchen Diner
Hallway
Bedrooms
Bathrooms
Total (kW)

Infrared Heating

882W
1470W
368W
1860W
672W
5.252kW

Electric Convection Heating

1250W
2328W
521W
2809W
923W
7.831kW

For more practical numbers, lets break things down per day.

Having all your IR heaters on for an hour would cost about £1.77

Having all your convection heaters on for an hour would cost about £2.65.

Assuming you have all your heaters on for 6 hours a day from September to March (which is the timespan you’ll typically need these heaters for), the convection heater setup would cost you £2908, while the IR system would cost you just £1950. That’s a saving of 33%.

It’s important to remember that you’ll almost never have all the heaters on at once in either system- and odds are you wouldn’t need to have them on for 6 hours a day every day in that period. This is just how much the most wasteful and least focused heating strategy would cost you.

What About Gas Central Heating?

If you’re going for electrical heating, Infrared is one of the best ways to save. But how does it compare to cheaper sources of central heat, like gas boilers?

It’s a lot better than you’d think.

At time of writing, electric energy is set to 34p per kWh. Gas is set at 10.3p per kWh. Harry’s house would need a 30kW boiler, which would cost about £3.09 per hour. To run your boiler for the same length of time as our September-March setup above would cost you £3374, a 42% reduction in bills.

That’s a lot more expensive even when you’re inefficiently running all the electric panels. This is because boilers really aren’t adaptable, they use the full amount of power at their disposal. Even if you have thermostatic radiator valves, it’s really hard to adjust your heating to your precise liking on a per room basis.

Once you factor in how great IR panels are at heating individual spaces on an as-needed basis, those savings get even better. Electric heating of any stripe can be paired with renewable sources of energy, like solar panels, for even MORE savings!

Final Thoughts

Harry’s house serves as an amazing demonstration of the sheer potential of IR in a real-world situation. If you’d like to get the same advice he had for outfitting a room, or even your entire house you can give us a call on 0116 436 2250 to get started. Alternatively, drop us an email at sales@mirrorstone.co.uk.

You can also request a FREE catalogue to be sent direct to your door – simply hit the button below and fill the form out, we’ll handle the rest.

Supplier of IR Heating Panels & Bar Heaters