According to the Energy Saving Trust, over half the money spent on household energy bills goes towards heating your home and providing hot water, which continue to rise every year. It’s more essential than ever to choose the most efficient electric heaters for your home so you can reduce your bills and keep your home warm and safe.
We’ll be reviewing the most important questions you should ask yourself when choosing the best energy efficient electric heaters.
Your guide to choosing the best energy efficient electric heaters
How does it work?
This might seem like an obvious question, but it’s an important one nonetheless. There are a variety of electric heaters on the market, all of which work very differently from one another.
While the defining factor of these heaters is that they’re powered by electricity, the way in which they receive this power and transform it into heat for your home differs. Night storage heaters (sometimes referred to as storage heaters) are generally what people think of when they hear electric heating. These types of heaters are infamously inefficient and can often lead to costly energy bills. They’re designed to store heat overnight while taking advantage of cheaper tariffs, also known as Economy 7, and expel that heat throughout the day.
A good electric heater will give you the flexibility of choosing when you need the heat without having to predict the next day’s weather. It should store your heat in its core (so that it requires less energy to run) and radiate it effectively throughout your room. A good brand, like ELKAtherm, will also give you complete flexibility on the programming of your heat for each room in your home.
What is it made of?
How effectively your electric heater stores its heat is entirely dependent on the materials it’s made of. Ensuring your electric heater is made up of the right materials is worth the initial investment to save you having to pay out years later in enormous energy bills. Top of the line brands like ELKAtherm are composed of a hybrid, non-porous ceramic clay core (a chamotte block) that extends across the entire radiator, which provides a steady heat release when required. This German engineering means that it only takes five minutes to power your radiator to maximum heat (compared to the seven hours it takes a night storage heater to heat up!). This also means that on a cold day (6 degrees celsius) and with an indoor temperature of 21 degrees celsius, your ELKAtherm radiator shouldn’t be on for more than 30% of the time.
What is the design?
How your electric heater looks not only impacts the aesthetic of your home but also how well it heats up. Many electric heaters have a flat surface, which means a smaller surface area to heat and radiate out into the room. The best electric heaters are energy efficient by having a fluted system, which increases the surface area and produces a strong convection. It’s also important to consider the size of the electric heater you need to effectively heat your room. It can be difficult to gauge which size you need when purchasing electric heaters online. This is why we offer our customers a free home survey. With over 60 different sizes of electric heaters to choose from, we’re able to find the perfect size heater for each room in their home.
What is the environmental impact?
Now more than ever, environmental impact is on everyone’s mind. And it’s important to consider this when choosing your electric heater. Understanding how your heating company will dispose of your old heating system or how the manufacturer recycles its products is essential in making an environmentally conscious decision. We’re proud to be able to offer all these things for our customers and more – with our charity partner, Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust, we plant a tree for every installation we complete, helping to protect woodlands and wildlife in the North of England.
ELKAtherm: the best energy efficient electric heaters
As you can see, there’s a lot to consider when picking out the most efficient electric heater for your home. We try to make this process easy for our customers by offering a free home survey. This way, we can tell you exactly what heaters you need for your home, how much they cost for our turnkey service, and answer any questions you might have about electric heating, tariffs or how it works. Just give us a call on 0800 270 7736 to speak with one of our electric heating experts today and we’ll book your free home survey.