Considerations When Buying a Radiator for Your Towels

Towel radiators are the best type of radiator to have in your bathroom and utility rooms. This is because they will help to minimise the damp of which these rooms are prone. They will prevent towels from becoming musty and they will help to ensure that the bathroom/utility room remains free from mould and mildew. However, it’s important that you make the correct choices when buying your towel radiators; you need to choose one that suits your needs. Here, we have produced a guide to help you to make the correct choices when buying a towel radiator.

1.    Size/width: the first thing that you need to do is work out how big the unit needs to be. There are two considerations here:

a.    The size of the room: you will need a radiator that provides the correct power rating for the size of the room. In the UK, we measure this in British Thermal Units per hour(BTU/h). there are online calculators that can help you to work this out, all you need to know is the size of the room.
b.    The size that suits your family/living situation: You need a radiator that can carry all of the towels you will be using. So, for instance, if you live in a house of four, you probably require a radiator with up to eight rungs (women tend to require two towels, one for the body and one for the hair).

So, when choosing a radiator you need to ensure it provides enough heat to warm the room and that it provides enough space to dry everyone’s towels. You might find that you have to buy a radiator with a higher BTU/h than you need because of the size of the unit you require. This is fine. However, you should never buy one with a lower BTU/h rating than you need because it won’t provide enough heat to dry the room and then you’re likely to develop problems such as mould and mildew.

2.    Central heating/standalone/ dual: Next, you need to consider how you want to heat the radiator. If you already have central heating, then it’s likely that you will want to use the central heating to warm the radiator. However, people often want to dry their towels during spring, summer and autumn, when the heating is off. It that is the case, then you will need a dual fuel radiator. Dual fuels combine central heating and electrics so you can choose to heat with either depending on the situation. For example, in summer, you simply use the radiator on its electric setting, but in winter, you use the central heating setting. Standalone units use electricity only and are the ideal choice if you don’t have central heating, or if you know that you will use this radiator in a completely different way to the remaining radiators on your central heating system.

3.    Thermostatic radiator valves: most modern radiators use TRVs and so should towel radiators. These allow you much greater flexibility over the unit. The make the radiator more efficient. We would only ever recommend buying radiators with a TRV.