Heating Buying Guide
Your guide to staying heated
As the days and nights get colder, it’s time to start thinking about heating your home. But with such a huge range of heaters available, it can be difficult to know which type of heater is best for you.
We’ve put together this heater buying guide to help you make an informed choice when it comes to buying a new heater.
How much power is needed to heat a room?
Before you buy a new heater, it’s important to know how much power your heater needs to effectively and efficiently heat your home.
A heater’s power is measured in watts (W). The bigger a room, the more W is required to heat it.
It’s also important to take into account whether your ceilings and walls are insulated, the climate where you live, and the orientation of the room.
Houses without insulation will require more powerful heaters. Likewise, heaters in cooler climates or in rooms that get less sunlight will use more power.
Refer to the table below to determine how much W your new heater will need to heat your home:
What type of heater is best?
Are panel heaters efficient?
A majority of panel heaters use convective heating to heat a room. This means that it heats and circulates the air, which rises to fill a room over time.
Once the panel heater starts raising the heat, it also begins to circulate heat around the room to remove any cold spots.
The best panel heaters are ideal for well-insulated, small to medium-sized rooms as the insulation prevents warm air from escaping and makes sure the room stays warm.
If you buy a panel heater, keep in mind that they’re generally not the most energy-efficient option and also far less effective in larger rooms.
What is a radiant heater?
The best radiant heaters are easy to set up and quickly heat cold rooms.
Radiant heaters come in a variety of styles, including freestanding, strip, and wall-mounted versions.
As their name suggests, radiant heaters heat a room by radiating heat from the central source. As a result, they are more effective in smaller spaces that are well-insulated.
When you buy a new radiant heater, you should be aware the heating element is usually exposed, so they’re not always suitable if you have small children or pets.
Radiant heaters usually come in two varieties:
Ceramic heaters: Ceramic heaters have ceramic plates that absorb heat from metal coils and then release it into the room.
New ceramic heaters reach their target temperature a lot faster than many other types of heaters because of the way that the ceramic plates absorb the heat.
When you buy a ceramic heater, you’re getting an energy-efficient heater. Due to the speed at which it heats, a ceramic heater uses less energy than many other types of heater.
Quartz heaters: As the name suggests, quartz heaters are primarily made with the heating element wrapped with quartz.
Quartz is more efficient than ceramic because it doesn’t impede the flow of infrared energy generated by the heating element and all of it can be used to heat the space around the heater.
New quartz heaters consume less energy than ceramic heaters to produce the same results.
What are column heaters?
While column heaters are slower to heat a room than other types of heaters, they retain heat better and for longer, which makes them perfect for cold nights.
Highly portable, when you buy a new column heater, it will most likely come with castors on the bottom so you can wheel the heater between rooms in the home.
This variety of heater come as an oil column heater and an oil-free column heater. Both are similar in terms of their performance with oil-free heaters being more lightweight.
Are fan heaters effective?
Fan heaters work in a similar way to regular fans but expel hot air instead of cool air.
Ideal for heating small spaces, new fan heaters draw in surrounding air, heat it using electrical resistance, and then distribute the air using the built-in fan.
Most fan heaters are portable and best suited as a supplementary heating option in bathrooms, sheds or outdoor areas.
When you buy a fan heater, you should be aware that while they are convenient to use, they are only suitable for heating a small space and often use a lot of power.
Are convection heaters good?
Convection heaters heat cool ambient air by passing it over a heating element and then dispersing it back into the room.
Ideal for larger rooms, convection heaters are quick to heat, more energy-efficient than other models, and well suited to long-term use.
Buying a new convection heater is perfect for shared spaces, such as a living room, as they heat the entire room and not just a part of it.
Does reverse cycle mean heating and cooling?
If you buy a new reverse cycle system, you should be aware that they are capable of both cooling and heating a room.
Unlike other heating systems, reverse cycle systems don’t create energy to heat a room. Reverse cycle air conditioning absorbs air from outside the home and then cools or heats it before spreading it inside.
This means that you will not need to buy a new heating element for the room that has the reverse cycle system.
However, you may want to consider buying a new heater for rooms that are not covered by your reverse cycle system.
Do heaters have safety features?
When you buy a new heater, it will include a variety of safety features to keep your home and family safe and prevent accidents.
Some safety features that you will find built into heaters include:
Overheat protection: A crucial safety feature in almost all new heaters, overheat protection automatically shuts off the unit when it gets too hot or you forget to turn it off.
Overheat protection with an automatic shut-off helps prevent the risk of fire from an overheated heating element while also protecting the unit itself from damage.
Tip-over protection: Tip-over protection is a safety feature in heaters that automatically shuts off the unit if it is tilted or falls over.
This safety feature is particularly important in heaters with an exposed heating element to protect it from coming into contact with anything that could catch fire.