Baseboard heating as an energy saving: the pros and cons

Skirting board heating is intended to save energy for the home owner by minimizing the effort used by a boiler or heat source to achieve the maximum temperature for a heating system. While this is broadly true, the claim needs to be examined in more detail to find out how much power the system can save.

The skirting system is designed with thin flow and return tubes, which require less water to fill and therefore less energy to heat. Therefore, the claim that a baseboard heating system requires less from the boiler or heat source is true.

However, the length or amount of active heating in this system can be greater than the combined heated area of ​​a traditional radiator system. So while the boiler or heat source is technically worked less hard to achieve the desired temperature, it can run longer to push the heat to a larger general area.

This increase in directly heated area is one of the great selling points for a skirting board radiator system. By heating more parts of a room directly (that is, with heat emanating from a nearby source rather than dissipating from a hot radiator at the other end of the room), the baseboard system is potentially capable of providing heat of the room more uniform and work. at a lower temperature than its radiator-based equivalent.

Of course, the heated skirting system is effectively a radiator system too, only in miniature. So instead of concentrating all the heating power in one solid unit, which is required to push that heat through the entire cubic area of ​​the space that it is supposed to heat, the baseboard version extends it.

In terms of simple physics, then, the power requirements for both should be roughly the same. If the plinth heating system is simply a collection of very small radiators, all of which draw power from the same type of boiler and raise the average room heat to the same average temperature; then the power they use to do so should be roughly identical.

The difference lies in the fact that the maximum temperature required to reach the average heat is considerably lower, when the radiant heat source is distributed throughout the room. This means that the boiler or central heating power source is not required to strain too hard, so it uses one less degree of fuel to reach the set temperatures. This is roughly analogous to the difference in fuel consumption between driving a fast car and driving it at a more measured pace.

The significant savings offered by the heated skirting system come when the homeowner connects to lower energy heat sources; and install new insulation to match the new system. By connecting heated skirting boards to a heat source with a lower maximum temperature (such as an air source heat pump), the homeowner reduces the amount of high-energy output that the system can deliver. The heat source can easily function perfectly at lower average temperatures because (as noted) the heated skirting boards themselves do not need to be heated to the same degree to provide the overall temperature required for the home.

The basic conclusion to draw, then, is this: a heated baseboard system has the ability to save energy compared to more traditional central heating systems. But you need help to reach your full potential. Thermostats and zone heating controls help; as well as the new insulation and the inclusion of a low power heat source at the heart of the installation. The more energy-saving factors a homeowner combines, the more noticeable the energy-saving effect will be.

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