Important Questions to Consider When Buying New Radiators

It’s important to take your time when buying new radiators. There are so many different shapes, styles, and performance-level, radiators that choosing the correct one for your needs is not always straightforward and instead, requires careful planning. Today, we are going to help you to make the right choice of radiator by introducing you to the questions you should be asking when buying new radiators.

Do I Need Central Heating or Electric Radiators?
This should be your first question. If you buy the wrong type of radiator, you won’t be able to use it. In general, if you have a boiler and central heating, you would buy a central heating radiator. If you don’t have this, you would buy an electric radiator.

There is an exception: if you need heating in a particular room at times when you do not want to switch on the central heating (e.g. if you need heat in your bathroom during summer), you should consider buying an electric radiator or a dual fuel radiator instead. This will allow you to have individual control over the radiator in that particular room, so you will not have to switch on the entire central heating just to get that one room warm.

What Size of Radiator Do I Need?
Rather than matching the size of the radiator to the size of the room from a visual point of view (i.e. what looks nice), you should be matching it in terms of the amount of heat output it can produce. Heat output generally correlates with size, in that that larger the radiator, the greater the amount of heat it can emit.

In order to find out the size of the radiator you need, you will need to take the dimensions of the room – width, height, and length. You will then need to note how many windows it has, whether these are double, triple, or single glazed and how many outer walls there are.

Once you have this information, you will need to use a BTU calculator to figure out how much heat the room requires. In the UK, heat output is measured in British Thermal Units per hour (BTU/ph).

You put all of the information about the room into the BTU calculator and it will return a measurement for you. For example, your room might require 1500 BTU/ph. Then, you can choose an appropriately sized radiator, which is one that can match that output. You can also choose to divide the load across several radiators. For example, you might choose to buy three 500 BTU/h radiators.

What Material Should I Choose?
There’s a lot of discussion about the best type of material to use for your radiator, but the truth is that they all have different qualities and provide different performances. A radiator that might work for one person, might not be suitable or you. Here, then, we recommend that you do some research and choose a unit that you think suits the way you use the system. For instance, we prefer cast iron radiators in our house, because we prefer our central heating to work on a timer.