We have recently built and installed an 8ft x 8ft x 8ft UPVC Conservatory and require a small heater to use it for an hour a day for lunch during the cold winter months.
Can anyone recommend a good small electric heater or a web site that information can be sought on heaters. I have been looking at the Delonghi heaters or something similar but not sure whether get a Convection or Oil based heater and which model is best.
Can anyone impart any knowledge or experience they have on heaters for Conservatories which would be much appreciated.
"Peter Richards" wrote | We have recently built and installed an 8ft x 8ft x 8ft UPVC | Conservatory and require a small heater to use it for an hour | a day for lunch during the cold winter months. | Can anyone recommend a good small electric heater or a web | site that information can be sought on heaters. I have been | looking at the Delonghi heaters or something similar but not | sure whether get a Convection or Oil based heater and which | model is best.
All electric heaters are basically the same. kW electricity in = heat out. Ignore the claims of super efficient this that or the other.
Your choice is basically:
Convector - cheap, slow to heat all round a room as depends on natural convection, silent apart from clicking thermostat, if dust settles on the elements inside will smell when hot
Fan - cheap, small and light, less localised heat as air is blown, motor and air noise, same problem with dust inside
Oil filled - expensive, heavy, easier to wipe over, otherwise as convector
Use a fan heater if you only require an hour of heat. It will get the room sufficiently comfortable much quicker than an equivalently rated heater without assisted airflow. It will be noisy, though.
Better still, use a fan assisted convector off your central heating system. Still noisy, but cheaper to run.
Our conservatory/extension is very cold and as its open into the kitchen, makes the kitchen cold too. Its a very basic construction (though has old metal double glazed which feels very cold!), so much so that the old airbricks at the back of the house open directly into this 'extension'. I've taped them up for the winter as they give a cold draught (though I'll open them up again when it warms up).
Anyway - there's a small flat panel heater which does little more than heat the area 2" away so we don't use it. There's no direct heating into that area, nor in the kitchen - apart from the boiler and any cooking.
I've wondered about putting in a small fan heater to warm it up, or a normal radiator. However, because it seems to get so cold - I just assume that I'll be fighting a losing battle and just close the kitchen door and keep the rest of the house warm.
Should I add a fan heater, add a radiator, keep all the doors open and let it warm up? Adding a radiator would be probably the best idea - maybe even one which is fan assisted (like my parents have) - but would require mods to the heating - which currently is nicely balanced so the furthest radiator gets warm. I'm concerned adding another radiator would make the furthest one less warm.
My other plans are to try and improve the insulation in the extension - but realistically, I doubt I could do anything without major works - which is prohibitive to us.
This needs to be sorted. Those airbricks are stopping your beams and boards rotting. They should open to the outside, not the conservatory. This is important.
Fan assisted radiators would be good for a conservatory.
You could alway rebalance the system. Also, balance is far less critical if you have TRVs on the radiators, because if one heats up faster, it'll turn itself off when the room gets warm and there will then more for the other radiators. Obviously, the system should still be balanced, it's just that the effects of imbalance are mitigated.
Can you put a stud wall between the cold conservatory and the kitchen? This would be cheap and could be loaded with celotex. Then later you could put a suspended floor in the conservatory, allowing plenty of ventilation under and clearing the airbricks.
Yes, I'm aware of that - though there's more airbricks around the front (2 I think) and side (3 or so?). Its been fine from May when we moved in, right around to early October - though I'll see what its like uncovering them again.
Last night we opened the old patio door (which closes off the living room to the conservatory) and left all the downstairs internal doors open, and the living room etc was noticably cooler - but not unbearable. Having a fixed radiator of some sort (rather than the 420W to 500W panel heater that does nothing, so we don't use it) plumbed in would probably help keep that temp up a bit too. Certainly a strong possibility in the spring (along with TRVs on the rest of the radiators - except the hall one with the thermostat).
Rebalancing would be necessary of course - but I was just concerned that after finding it quite difficult to get the furthest radiator to heat up, adding another one next to it would make it even more difficult. But maybe a good flush and some TRVs in the spring would help that.
Incidentally, we got a programmable thermostat last weekend and its wonderful! Have the heating on all day now, just let it fall to 16 deg when we're out. Have to see what the house is like this evening after letting the conservatory warm up all day.
I seemed to forget the fact that, if we never heated the conservatory, it would be cold.... which meant we didn't heat it as I thought it would be a waste of heat as it would lose all the heat. Kind of a catch 22 situation.
Well, I'd actually thought about putting in a pseudo door thing between the two. Putting a proper door/wall would be difficult as the wiring (FCU, light switches etc) for the garage + conservatory are in the vertical where the frame would go, which would mean re-routing that. My plan was more of putting a screen in which we could open to walk through - but would stop draughts (but offer no insulation other than that). We like the ability to go from the kitchen, to the conservatory and into the garden/garage etc. There's no other way out from the kitchen to the outside world except through the house.
Anyway, as I've found that having all the doors open makes the place much more bearable, I think I'll stick with it for now, and put a plumbed radiator (maybe a fan assisted one) in. Changing the floor of the conservatory would be the ideal thing, however the height of the ceiling/flat roof would not really allow it (for some reason, the people who did it, didn't think to put it at the same height as the rest of the ceilings, but dropped it along with a step down into it. Had the ceiling been higher, it might have been possible (though then you'd get issues with the doors!).
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