Here at Brimstone Energy, we are big advocates of Low Temperature Heating.

But what is that?

It is the opposite to what most homes in the UK are set up for. In the UK the standard heating arrangement is for radiators to blast heat into the home for short periods of time. This is the least efficient way of applying heat to a building. But it is convenient.

Low temperature heating applies heat gently into your property, over a longer period of time. The building is maintained at a more stable temperature throughout the day. Radiators are never hot to touch. They are warm, but not hot.

There are a number of advantages to low temperature heat, including reduced wear and tear on components of the heating system and reduced moisture content within the building. Most people find that the comfort levels are better – with a consistent temperature across a room without areas being either too hot or too cold.

But the principle benefits are to efficiency – and reduced costs.

This diagram from Heat Geek shows us that the standard UK condensing boiler needs to have a flow temperature (that is the temperature at which water flows around your central heating system) of below 55 degrees Celsius in order to maximise efficiency. It is possible to achieve efficiency levels of between 96 – 98% if the flow temperature is turned down low enough.

Conversely, most homes are only achieving an efficiency of about 86% by running at 70 degrees Celcius.

This, simply, is a 10% efficiency loss.

There are, naturally, some additional complexities to consider.

To those of you who have never paid much attention to your radiators, it might surprise you to know that each radiator has a very specific power rating. So a small single panel radiator has a measurable rating, which is obviously much smaller than a large double convection radiator.

For the small radiator to be able to adequately heat the room, the temperature of the radiator needs to be high. If the temperature of that small radiator is low, then it simply cannot dispense enough heat into the room to maintain the desired room temperature (at least, during cold weather that is).

When you have a larger radiator installed, it can emit sufficient heat into the room at a lower temperature, such that it will be capable of maintaining the temperature of the room.

All of this can be measured.

Prior to installing a heat pump, it is mandatory for a heat loss calculation of your home to be undertaken.

Brimstone Energy can do this heat loss survey for you, whether you are about to get a heat pump, or – perhaps more likely in the short term – you simply want to save money on your heating bill.

The heat loss survey guarantees that your heating system will work adequately in virtually all scenarios that we are likely to experience here in the UK. This is the ‘design condition’. It will recommend whether or not your existing radiators need to be swapped out for some larger ones.

Embrace Low Temperature Heating in your home.

You can actually benefit from low temperature heating without replacing your boiler. As mentioned above, the greatest operating efficiency of your existing boiler is likely to be around 40-50 degrees Celsius. You can turn down your flow temperature with a simple turn of a dial. This will instantly save you money.

Armed with your heat loss survey, you can get some of your existing radiators upgraded. You don’t need to do them all at once. It might well be the case that the heat loss survey identifies that, for instance, in 2 rooms of your home, the insulation is inadequate to enable low temperature heating, but that in the rest of the home, you might be ok for all but the coldest weeks of winter.

In which case, you can upgrade those two radiators at a relatively small expense now, before looking to make other changes in the future. It can be iterative.

And in that cold spell….you can turn the flow temperature back up. Problem solved!

And finally…..as mention in the Powering Up Britain post, it is the intention of the UK Government to artificially increase the price of gas, so as to ‘nudge’ people into moving away from gas and to electrify their heating source.

So this is coming, and you might as well take small steps now, rather than face a giant expense in the future.

Brimstone Energy UK – for all your home energy and energy efficiency needs.