What does ΔT, Delta T, and DT mean and why are some 50oC and others 60oC when it comes to radiators?

Hello, we thought we'd tackle a slightly thorny issue with radiators today. Heat outputs. 

Despite there being the European directive EN442, there remains plenty of confusing information regarding how radiators perform and how much heat a radiator is truly providing. This post is simply a layman's overview of how radiators are measured and calculated for output.

The first thing we need to understand is that two exact same radiators can offer different heat outputs depending on the system they are operating on. The reason is that heating systems can be set at different temperatures. So how do we know if a radiator is giving enough output at the temperature our boiler runs at?

EN442 came out in the late 90s with the plan of standardising radiator performance across Europe. The method is simple. We take a radiator and put it on a heating system operating at 75oC. The water then leaves the radiator at 65oC with us looking at achieve an ambient (room) temperature of 20oC. this is referred to as  75/65/20 - Delta T 50oC or ΔT 50oC or DT 50oC. This is the standard required by the EU.

Sadly, it doesn't end there. Because boilers can be adjusted to run hotter and the fact that older boilers run at an optimum of 90oC (Delta T 60oC) we then have an issue that your radiators can in fact offer more output than this benchmark of 75oC. This has created a loophole for the industry and very misleading issue for consumers who don't know what they're supposed to be looking at.

There are many manufacturers and retailers offering outputs at  Delta T 60 and in some cases, where our suppliers have provided published outputs, we've used the 90oc calculation, (although we are trying to wean ourselves off this, ha!). It is very tricky as its very difficult to inform the end user (this is the entire point of this post) about this issue. We've had customers call us asking why we offer the exact same radiator as a competitor, but ours offer less heat. Ultimately, Delta T 50oC should be the figure you're looking for. If you need to work out the true calculation from Delta T60, you divide by 1.264.

If you want to read more on the science of this, please see our page here.

https://www.radiatorshowroom.com/correction_factors_.html

It's All Over Now....

Sorry. Another song title, although I am talking about summer again. In truth, it probably isn't all over. We'll hopefully have a short seasonal blip at some point in September where people will be rushing to the sheds to pick up half price barbecues and garden furniture at get a few days use before the weather goes downhill and the lighting and heating go on.

Here at Radiator Showroom, this is a strange time of year. We've had a great summer with plenty of people boxing clever and having lovely new radiators fitted when they aren't using their heating system and when plumbers are on their slower period before what we call the "heating season" starts. This is when people switch on their central heating to find their boiler or pump has a problem. Plumbers are flat out during this time and often have long lead times to attend jobs.

This post is really a continuation of our last post. Now is a great time to take a look at your heating system by firing it up and testing it before the that time comes around and you need to switch it on for the first time to discover a problem. It really is worth flashing it on and making sure it works OK. If you need an installer and are based in the Portsmouth area. We have some details for some highly qualified Gas Safe accredited installers and we're happy to pass their details over.  

Feel free to give us a call on 023 9269 6622

Summer's Here And The Time Is Right.....

For radiators (OK, and dancing in the street too). Happy Summer everyone!

I hope everyone is enjoying the weather. Some love it, whilst for others, like my mum, it can get a little much. My take is that I'm never going to moan as its always gone way too fast in our often shady Isle.

Of course, I'm not here to discuss the weather, I want to point out as I have in the title of this post, the time is right. To think about installing new radiators. Traditionally in our game, we get busy between September through to November, depending on whether we have a late summer and people buy half price garden furniture from the sheds in September. Either way, things slow up in December as most generally defer building work until the new year if they haven't started in November.

So we have this small window that everyone wants to cram new radiators installations into. The problems we face are as follows:

Available plumbers: This window is a time when people switch on their heating for the first time to find their boiler has broken down, or a pump has failed. Installers refer to these as distress calls. Plumbers are usually good chaps who have a regular base of clients and will prioritise their workload according to need. We refer installers to our clients often, but during this time, we hand out cards with the caveat that they shouldn't expect a call immediately or that the work can be carried out quickly. Odds are, they'll have a backlog at this time of year. Their workloads are considerably lower in the summer, which mean a quicker response to your call and hopefully a site visit within the week.

Available radiators: Many of our overseas manufacturers close for August, so its imperative that stock orders are placed to arrive in the warehouse before the end of July as there are no shipments in August and we need to have radiators ready to ship early September if required. We are in fact heavily stocked up in July in anticipation of this.

So Summer really is the right time for choose and have your radiators installed. Just a suggestion. If you'd like to give us a call, please feel free on 023 9269 6622 or email Enquiries@RadiatorShowroom.com. Alternatively give one of our sites a visit.

www.RadiatorShowroom.com
www.Rads-Direct.co.uk

So you want a new radiator but can't move your pipes?

So you want a new radiator, but can't move your pipes?

We've all been there. You've got a nasty old radiator in a room you're about to do up. Immediate thoughts as a quick fix go to radiator covers. Don't go there. Honestly. Firstly, they're a false economy, costing up a couple hundred pounds for a made to measure unit and then you have to put a bazzillion coats of undercoat on it or that crazy expensive MDF primer. You're talking £250 plus whatever time its taken you and to top it, you'll be lagging the radiator behind it and either not getting any heat into the room or turning everything up to compensate. Not great.

Onto option number 2. New radiator. We have a great range. One problem that can arise is that the range of radiators you like aren't the same size as the old one. On the surface, this seems like an insurmountable problem. In reality, its very easily solved with some careful selection and a few additional bits.

Firstly, if you're looking to replace a towel rail, these can be a little more tricky than a standard radiator as most towel rails have downwards facing connections. This means that the connections are situated at the bottom of the vertical bars, and as such the pipework will need to fit exactly both width and out from the wall. Fortunately, many manufacturers are starting to make their products using a uniform sizing system, so something should be available with a little digging around. We're happy to do the digging for you.

If you're looking to replace a radiator, then odds are you'll have to make a new radiator fit. With a few simple rules, this can be made to work in an elegant way and few people would even notice you've retro fitted to existing pipes.

Firstly, the  most important rule is to size the radiator smaller than the existing one. Only slightly and if its almost the same size then all the better, but larger doesn't work. You'll need to move or heaven forbid bend the pipes to make it work. A slightly smaller radiator can be made to fit by changing a couple of parts in the valves. Valve extenders come in a  variety of widths from 15mm to 70mm and upwards and look like this:

Quite simply, all we need to do is use a slightly smaller radiator than the one in situ. In most cases, this will solve your replacement radiator woes.

Please feel free to give us a call on 08450 580 540 or 023 9269 6622 or email Sales@RadiatorShowrooom.com and we'll be happy to advise.

It Drives Me Up The Wall!

Don't worry, I'm not upset about anything. I want to talk about vertical radiators. Up the wall. Geddit?

I want to take you on a little trip back in time. I was born in the 1970's (actually 1970 to be exact. I could have potenially knocked nine years off my age by leaving it as it was, but I'm not wearing well enough. Heh.). Those who are of a similar age and a bit older will remember watching the old John Pertwee and Tom Baker episodes of Doctor Who.

In our nostalgic recounting, watching this series with its various monsters and aliens we seem to have embraced this idea that we would be so scared by these characters, we would 'hide behind the sofa'. Its almost become a prerequisite for evidencing you were there. "Oh I remember the Daleks, but it was the cybermen that really scared me!" Incidentally, we also only remember two breeds of monster which should only serve to illustrate how suspect our memories are. 

Sorry, I need to get this back onto the topic of radiators. My question is who lives in a house with living rooms sufficiently large to accomodate hiding space for scared children nowadays?

More importantly, are our rooms smaller, or is it that we have less room because our living rooms have more in them? I think the answer lies in both. This causes problems when we want to put radiators in. 40" T.V.s are the minimum and if one can squeeze in two three seater sofas, then we will. Don't forget your kids also need sufficient space for the XBox Kinect sensor to work properly. All this additional occupancy means one solution when it comes to radiators. Go up. Or stick the radiators behind the sofa. At least your small children will be warm when Doctor Who is on....

Vertical radiators make for a perfect solution in our increasingly cramped living spaces. Three main reasons for this.

1: Vertical radiators make use of the dead space above the height of a dado rail (unless you really like hanging pictures more than warmth ;) )

2: Because they are very pleasing from an asthetic point of view, vertical radiators are usually hung in more prominent places, thus allowing heat into the room. 

3: Because many are produced in sections or elements, a vertical radiator at 1800mm high with 6 sections is invariably less expensive than its horizontal counterpart. 

Whilst they are mostly available as contemporary radiators, there are some in traditional styles. The best thing to do is have a look around the website or pop into the showrooom. We've got plenty on display and even more available to order.  

  

What's In A Name Like Designer Radiators?

Hi everyone,

A slightly off topic post that I wanted to talk about. In our rarefied industry, we are expected to market ourselves in a number of ways to architects, specifiers, plumbers and to the end user. The easiest method for us to get our wonderful products out in the public domain is via the internet, which on its surface is a very easy thing. You put your product up on web pages and hey presto, everyone sees them.

I wish things were that simple. Building webpages is a very small part of getting new products out there. Firstly, those new pages have to be on a website that is seen by people. Its obvious, but getting a website seen is not always an easy task. Not only does it have to be seen, it more specifically needs to be seen by the right people. So who are the right people and how do we get our stuff in front of them? Basically we use what is known in the world of Search Engine Optimisation as 'keywords' or 'keyphrases'. These come in myriad varieties and its all about what our customers are searching for.

The most common and obvious phrase for us would be 'radiators'. Or so you'd think... The thing is, we don't sell radiators in the normal sense. Pressed steel panel radiators are something we can easily obtain, but in all fairness, you'd be better served to ask your plumber to organise these for you as he will be able to buy them at the local plumber's merchant at the same price and you wouldn't have to fork out for carriage charges for us to ship them to you.

We specialise in 'Designer radiators'. Wooo! What is a designer radiator? In its simplest definition, its a radiator that's trendy, fashionable, painted in a fun or funky colour (actually, any colour other than white and sometimes, even white. Ha!), vertical radiators, stainless steel radiators, traditional radiators, cast iron radiators, and so on. The phrase Designer Radiators was coined years ago and donesn't really mean anything apart from 'not a normal radiator', but that's not quite as catchy. People use these phrases to search for radiators and we have to squeeze into the text on our pages all these words so you can find us. The very fact that you're here reading this is most likely because you typed something in to bring up a search engine (probably Google) result showing a link to a page on our website.

Many people know how all this works and from our side, we have all kinds of tools and programs to analyse who arrives on our website and how it all happens, but the reason I've written this post is because I'm interested in your feedback.

I'd like to ask you if you can send an email (don't worry, we don't harvest email addresses for spam purposes) to us with the word you typed into Google which brought you to us. If you've found this page and are willing to do that for us, we'll take £10 off any order you place with us over £200.00.

Please send to keywords@RadiatorShowroom.com We look forward to hearing from you.

How much heat do I need for my room?

How much heat do I need for my room?  (part one...)

 

OK, today I want to talk about heat output requirements. This is the one area that causes the most confusion and frustration to end users when selecting radiators. The main problem is that Joe Public ordinarily doesn't have much need to understand how their heating works or what their radiators do for them. 

Simply put, radiators on a central heating system are designed for the occupants of the house to avoid the feeling of cold. They're not designed to radiate heat in a blast like an open fire or wood burner. They just tick away, raising the overall temperature of a room in most cases, when specified correctly, to an ambient temperature of 20ºC or more. 

With this in mind, when we look at heat calculations, we have a number of resources available to us to choose the correct output radiator. Firstly, there are a huge selection of output calculators online. We have one on our site here.

The problem with using output calculators is that it is simply maths. X+Y=Z. There isn't any interaction with how the room actually feels heat wise, the aspect of the room or how the occupant uses the room or what the occupant prefers, temperature wise. We actually removed our calculator from the menu section of our Radiator Showroom website as people thought the figures it supplied had to be adhered to like the Ten Commandments or something. Whilst we need to remain within a reasonable tolerance, of course, there is some waggle room. 

The second consideration is design. If you're here, odds are you're looking for designer radiators, contemporary radiators or traditional radiators. In other words, you're looking for something nice and attractive. When people focus in the radiator output, they can get carried away with Watts or BTU (British Thermal Unit) outputs and select huge radiators that look entirely inappropriate. In most cases, radiators are available in a number of sizes and where large output are needed, often its a good idea to split things up with two or more radiators. Most people are surprised to learn that costs for two radiators is usually very similar to one unit at double the size.   

To Be Continued..............

How to Choose a Traditional Radiator for your home

Though they’re perhaps not the first design features that you think of when redecorating your home, your radiators can have a huge impact on the overall success of your finished design, and can make or break your home’s new look.

Occasionally, you’ll spot a radiator that you love so much you build your entire interior design scheme around it, however, more often than not, choosing your radiators will be an natural part of completing your design and a great finishing touch in your home.

So if you’re struggling to choose just one of our fantastic radiator designs, here are some things to think about to help you narrow it down.

Size

The very first thing to do before choosing a radiator is to work out exactly how much space you’ve got to install it in.

If it’s going on a long, straight wall this won’t be too much of an issue, however if you want your radiator installed under a window, in an alcove or within a pre-existing radiator cover, you need to know that it’s going to fit.

When calculating the size of the radiator that you require, remember to take its width as well as its height into consideration or you may be left disappointed.

 

Location

The destination of the radiator in your home will also have a big impact on the style that you choose.

For example, if the radiator will be mostly out of a sight, a simpler design would probably do, however if the radiator is going to be in a prominent position then its design is going to be a lot more important.

Period design

Our radiators are specially designed to cover a range of periods, so no matter what style you’ve chosen for your home, there should be a radiator to suit it.

From the elaborately decorated to the all of our radiators have a huge amount of decorative appeal and can contribute a lot to any interior.

All of our more intricate radiator designs would look fantastic installed in a home with existing period features, complimenting things like wooden floors, fireplaces and cornicing perfectly.

Contemporary design

If you’ve gone for a more contemporary look for your home, we’re guaranteed to still have the perfect radiator for your needs.

Anything from the strong, clean lines to the modern rounded edges would look great in any home, giving a great designer touch to your central heating.

Aluminium Radiators - What's so special about them?

 

 

Aluminium radiators are quite a strange phenomenon on these shores. They're been around in Europe for decades, but they haven't been seen by us Brits, unless on our hols in the Costa Del Sunny. Recently, they've started becoming more widespread in the UK. So what's making people switch from our ingrained ideal of the pressed steel panel radiator to something that looks so different?

As you probably know, aluminium as a material is incredibly lightweight, but many don't realise that its heat transference properties are tremendous. This makes aluminium a great choice to make radiators with.

Another benefit of aluminium radiators is  due to the great heat transfer, they don't need to hold a lot of water. This means you have less water in your heating system, which in turn means less water for your boiler to heat, which in turn means lower heating bills.

On the subject of heating bills, many people are looking into alternative and renewable energy. Aluminium radiators lend themselves to solar, ground source and air source heating due to the low water and heat transfer properties they possess and the fact that an aluminium radiator will transfer heat at lower temperatures than a pressed steel panel radiator.

From a production perspective, many aluminium radiators are modular in their design, consisting of die cast or extruded sections bolted together. This means you can buy sufficient sections for the space you want to heat and divide them according to the number of radiators you need without being stuck with the particular sizes offered by pressed steel panel radiators. You can also add to or remove individual sections as required so you have a far more flexible method of radiator layout.

Throw in the huge range of heights from 300mm to 2000mm and most in between and you have an amazing array of size options to provide heat to almost any space.

Radiators - Particularly of The Designer Kind.

Hello Everyone and thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I've been advised by the clever people who help me with optimising our website that we need to start blogging about the things we specialise in. Simply put, we have a showroom in Portsmouth filled with designer radiators and they're telling me to talk about them. Seeing as I know a fair bit about this game, I reckon I'll be able to quickly make this a bit of an authority site, but in the meantime, I thought I'd just post up something practical for people to think on.

The thing that differentiates what we sell with the more conventional type of radiator is to do with one simple aspect. They're 'designer'. Now what exactly does this mean? Well, designer in this context refers to it's form, whether cast iron and traditional or modern vertical, the shape and ascetic is a priority. In some cases the ascetic may even supersede the product's functionality, but that's something I'll come to shortly.

Designer radiators, whilst not always or necessarily possessing the most efficient way of providing heat in their basic function can actually be the most logical solution and offer the most heat in certain situations.

Hmm... That sounds like a total contradiction in the same sentence, doesn't it? Let me explain.

Radiators are often only as good as where they're put. Back in the day, if you had heating put in, the plumber would simply ask which wall you wanted the rad on and then he'd bugger off down the plumbers merchant and buy the cheapest model available for your output requirements. Positioning usually meant under the bay window. We've all got rads there, even I have.

Fast forward 25 years. The three seat sofa and two armchairs has been replaced by two three seaters (or four seaters if you're really lucky), and the 21" telly is now at minimum a 40" flat screen. Suddenly you're in the realm of bad radiator positioning. That bay window rad is now heating the back of a sofa because you've run out of room and anyone who sits on it in the winter falls into an immediate heat induced coma.

The answer is a vertical radiator. Or vertical radiators. Plural. Take a couple of thin tall radiators and put them up either side of the bay window, or either side of the fire place. In most houses (unless you're married to a photographer, like I am) anything above dado height is dead space and this will put it to good use.

So you've killed two birds with one stone. You're not putting guests to sleep and you've putting the radiators in the room allowing them to heat the room properly.

Thanks for reading. I'll post something else up soon.