Space Heating Options: Deciding Which Space Heater Is Best For You

What Is The Best Heater For Home Space Heating

There are many types of space heaters for the homes user. A home user generally does not have huge heating requirements and will usually only want a heater to plug into their local socket for convenient hassle free heating. Electric heaters are the main chose for spot heating a room and most popular are oil filled radiators, fan heaters, Smaller ceramic heaters, and halogen heaters. Smaller ceramic heaters are robust and compact, and have become a very efficient way of heating but lack large outputs of a fan heater or oil filled radiator. A halogen heater is effective, fast to heat and also has the byproduct of giving of light which maybe useful to some users. The most popular is the oil filled radiator and probably the most comfortable to live with as the heat is radiant so does not tend to dry the air. Convection heaters are compact and generally wall mounted for a compact and reliable form of heating.

Heaters For Commercial Users Such As Offices And Work Areas

A commercial user wanting to heat a warehouse (+100kW heating requirement) will need to decide which fuel is best to use, the space heaters efficiency balanced against building energy supplies i.e. gas , electricity or oil. The main thing to consider when purchasing the space heater is the power source of your heater. If you have a large area that requires electric space heating such as a open plan office then the first thing to look at is the incoming mains. Electric heaters are limited as they have a low efficiency, usually they will consume around 4.1A@240V of electrical power to produce 1 kW of heat. Most commercial premises have three phase incoming mains which is useful for spreading the load of the electric heaters. Propane and gas style heaters are compact and have a large capacity heat output when compared to the foot print of a similar electric space heater.

Most electric space heaters have a power requirement of single phase models: 3 kW, 5kW(max), where any electric heater over 6kW requiring a three phase 415V electrical supply. With mains gas a heating requirement for a building of 30kW is not a problem, but for a electric heater that would be 125A which can take a huge chunk of a commercial buildings electric energy supply incomer of 100A per phase. This is why many commercial buildings with limited electricity supplies use air heat pumps such as air conditioning and gas. For a spot heating large areas, direct electric heating such as fan heaters and oil filled radiators can be un-economical use of power but are useful for localized heating.

How Much Space Heating Power Is Required For My Area

How much heating power is require for a area is worked out by a simple calculation. A basic rule of thumb is a minimum of 33watts(W) per meters cubed (m3). So if a area is 10 Meters x 5 Meters x 3 Meters the total cubic metering of the room will be 150 meters cubed. Therefore 150 x 33 = 4950 Watts of heating required. If you would like a figure in BTU times the final kW heating requirement by 3412.

Another Example: An area(A) of 250 m3 requires (A)250x33(W)= 8.25 Kw (x 3412= 28000 Btu)

We have a huge range of industrial space heaters for sale from 2kW to 100kW. Brands including unters, Broughton and Kroll all renowned for their high quality and outstanding reliability. These include single and three phase units.