Case Studies

HOUSING ASSOCIATION

Customer brief: To provide a heating solution that the tenants could afford to run.

Efficient and effective heating

Background

The apartment was heated by electric convection heaters. The tenants were on housing benefit and found it financially difficult to heat their home to maintain an even constant temperature. If they ran it for the 9 hours a day it needed to keep the apartment warm the cost would have been £1069 so they only ran it for 2-3 hours a day. The apartment also suffered from damp and condensation, a continual maintenance cost for the landlord which was not helped by the fabric of the building being constantly cold. Pat also suffers from asthma and arthritis and both conditions means she must be able to control the ambient temperature which was hard with the electric convection heaters. (They had an additional two 2kW electric portable heaters which have been excluded from calculations).

Solution

• Products recommended were ceiling mounted and wall mounted RADIANT HEATING panels at total 1.83 kW.
• Each room is separately controlled
• Energy monitor installed to demonstrate the reduced energy being used (less than one third). Tenants previously turned their heating on for 2-3 hours per day but only received double this time in warmth. The monitor allowed the tenants to see the saving & realise they could afford to leave the panels on.

Results

• Controllable heat & comfortable warmth for Pat’s health conditions; a constant temperature is maintained 24 hours per day
• Energy reduction of 4.17 k W over previous system
• Cost savings; £70 saved between 2010-11 energy bills even with a 10% increase in energy costs. This is based on only switching the heating on for 2-3 hours a day. If they had switched their previous heating on for 9 hours (to get the equivalent constant heat from Infrared heaters) the cost saving would have been £889.