Is your heater right for the job?

Winter often arrives quicker than we hope, and when people start to feel the cold we often see a rush to the shops to buy heaters. Often this leads to Kiwi’s walking out the shop door with a cheap, non-efficient, plug-in heater like an oil column or convector heater.

What’s a convector heater?

It’s a heater that often has a simple coil inside it to heat the air. The warm air then rises off the top of the heater. These can heat a room very fast, however, as the warm air rises, a thermodynamic process called ‘heat stratification’ occurs. This means you often end up doing a great job of heating the ceiling. That’s no good for you, or your wallet, unless you happen to like living on the ceiling….

The other issue is that these cheap, readily available heaters often do not have sensitive thermostats. This means they run on full power regardless of whether they have met the temperature requirements of the room or not.

Our advice is to make the investment and source a heater with ‘radiant’ properties.

Radiant heaters don’t focus all their energy on heating the air. Instead, they transmit heat directly from surface to surface (similar to a log fire or glowing heater). This means heat can stay at floor level for longer, and as it heats objects (including people!) rather than just the air, you can heat a room with less energy and feel much cosier.

If you are looking to buy a radiant heater, aim for a heater with an accurate digital thermostat as this will give you even more control and energy efficiency. For bonus points look for a radiant heater you can control on a programme or remotely via wifi - this ensures you don’t end up heating needlessly, and are able to have the convenience of coming home to a warm space.

At Eco Geek, we focus primarily on heating with radiant properties (and wifi capabilities!). If you are interested in a radiant heater, we have a range of options, from our High Wall Infrared Radiant heaters to LHZ radiator heaters and more.