There comes a moment in the working life of every energy consultant – somewhere between opening the door to the plant room and nearly getting thrown back into the adjacent swimming pool by the ensuing blast of heat from unlagged pipework – that one appreciates the job that pipe insulation can do.
I have learnt to enter domestic bathrooms with a similar degree of caution, although at least here there is a king-sized double bed behind you to break your fall. However, it’s not a lack of pipe insulation that’s the problem here.
It seems to be increasingly common for bathrooms to be fitted with electric underfloor heating as it becomes seen (like non-recycled toilet paper) as one of life’s essential little luxuries – often this seems to be more about warm feet than space heating as there will usually be central heating in the room already.
Unfortunately, these systems are all too often fitted with inadequate controls: either a thermostat with no time control, or a tiny programmer with a screen the size of a postage stamp, and a manual that, had the client not lost it, would still not be much help as it is written in impenetrable Pigeon English.
As a result, electric bathroom heating is – in my experience – usually left on 24/7… and maybe 365 too. Sometimes the client is vaguely aware that this is not ideal, however when I suggest it’s adding at least 50% to their electricity bill I usually here a click or beep as they immediately reach for the power button. It is inevitably becoming a much bigger problem now where homeowners have installed electric UFH more widely in their home, tantalised by the idea of the low installation cost compared to a wet system, but that’s another story…
Another variation on this theme is the electric towel rail. These are often hybrid versions with a connection to the central heating circuit and an electric element of somewhere between 200W and a whopping 1000W. Once again it is very common for me to wander round larger houses pointing out two or three piping hot towel rails, unadorned with wet towels, and often in bathrooms that are rarely used. An unregulated 400W element will cost around £1000 a year to run – once again, as soon as I point this out, the switch on the wall outside is rapidly turned off. It is probably unfair to blame homeowners as no-one explains the risks and running costs when they are installed; if all programmers user-friendly then perhaps we wouldn’t have this problem anyway.
Another confounding factor is the fact that most towel rails are chrome. As Jennifer Aniston once said, here comes the science bit. Chrome – or indeed any shiny metallic surface – is a pretty lousy radiator of heat, so although a towel rail can be hot to the touch, you can hold your hand right next to it and hardly feel any heat at all. It is perhaps unsurprising then that homeowners can walk past towel rails without realising that they are on at all.
I always recommend that towel rails are specified in a solid colour to improve heat output and comfort in bathrooms, and reduce the need for electric underfloor heating at all. Of course, education of the homeowner is another key factor – partly about electricity being four times the cost of gas, but also that electric towel rails on a central heating circuit shouldn’t need an immersion boost in the winter at all. Of course, usable controls are always sensible, however this is an area where a manually-started press-button countdown timer for the immersion element is probably the most efficient control of all, as it can be run only as it is needed, and will turn itself off after an hour or whatever period has been selected.
Turning off unnecessary electric heating is often the quickest win in my energy surveys – in a sense it can make my job almost too easy, sometimes saving the client the cost of the survey within a year at the flick of a switch, and with a similar carbon saving to putting a solar PV system on the roof. However, as professionals we also have a duty to make sure we are making clients aware of the costs associated with running these systems, and providing control systems that help homeowners manage them effectively.
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