UKH

Hi all,

With no social media for me, UKC masses seems the best place to ask:

Does anyone have any experience of using either an Infrared Heat Panel or a Downdraft extractor in their homes?

Both seem like a great idea but most feedback I can find has the hint of advertorials.

 Extractor would be for a normal kitchen which also has windows.

 Heat panel for the utility room, so not a lived in space.

 Thanks in advance!

 Iain

Radiant heat panels work by heating you up, not the room. I think in a utility room you'd end up with damp and mould problems (the best way to avoid this is a good level of background heat and ventilation).

Can't help with the extractor question I'm afraid.

downdraft extractors are essentially just an extractor fan, with a slightly different mounting and fixing arrangement...

it's very much a question of where are you extracting to, i.e. ventilating to the outside; so the route of the ducting that will connect the fan, through the wall (or ceiling) to the outside...etc..

there might be "recirculation" versions available. air is not ducted out of the building but you have carbon filters instead. I'v had a re-circ hood extractor for a while, and it's fine enough, the air just exits above the hood. (it's a big kitchen with a high ceiling so steam build-up is never a problem) Only recently changed the filters after a good number of years....

personally, I don't think I would want a recirculation downdraft type (if there is such a thing) - you would be pumping dirty air into a void behind the units. at least up the wall you have a chance of cleaning the wall if need be. I'v never felt the need to clean the wall above the re-circ hood - but this might depend on the regularity of changing the filters and your consumption of fried food

 Thanks for your responses!

I probably misused Utility Room when I mean larder, but good point on background heat. It would be cheaper to stick a radiator in, but we are trying to get as much off gas as possible during this renovation (I appreciate Green Electricity programmes are probably anything but).

 Thanks to any future responses, I'll be away from the Internet for a few days so will have to check in later.

 Cheers

Our house had infrared panel heaters throughout when we moved in. The previous owner described their installation as the worst decision he ever made, and after trying them out for a bit, I can see why. They have now all been removed and normal wet radiators should be going in soon.

To add some context we live in a poorly insulated Victorian house with high (3m+) ceilings. In winter it is flipping cold inside and while the infrared heaters did provide some heat if you stood in their 'beam' the effect wasn't great enough to remove the general feeling of cold from the house or warm you up as an individual.

I think in a very well insulated small room they may be a workable solution, but I would still advise caution. A quick glance at the watt output of typical panels will show that they are going to generate far less warmth than even a small conventional electric heater.

I have the Cookology 90cm downdraft extractor.  It's decent - it certainly does the job, probably not as effectively as a regular hood (so to get the same extraction it's a bit noisier).  If you can go with a hood extractor then do, but if, as for me, the layout of the kitchen just doesn't allow for it, then they're a good solution.  And it does feel pretty space age when you turn it on and it rises up!

If you have lots of money, there are now inductor hobs with built in extractors that pull the steam down through the hob surface...

The IR heat panels are a very specific solution to a particular problem, and they are woefully oversold as miracle devices.  They are not a good way to simply heat a room.  Any 'regular' heating device - a gas driven wet radiator, an electric fan heater, or even a 100W light bulb, works mostly by convection and heats the air.  Once the air is warm, if you go in there, you feel warm.  Gas is about 1/5 the price of electricity so the cheapest way to do this is with gas fired central heating.

The IR panels work almost exclusively by radiation.  They don't heat the air, they hear whatever they cast their IR beam upon.  So if you sit directly in front of a relatively low powered IR panel, you will feel surprisingly warm, because you are absorbing most of its output.    But they do not heat the room itself - everything else stays cold.  

So, if you want to feel warm whilst you are in the room, then the IR panel is a good solution.  But if you want to heat the whole room on electricity , then just get a bog standard bar heater.  Watt for watt it will be exactly as good as an IR panel, and an awful lot cheaper to buy.  If the heating requirement is small, then fitting a 100W incandescent bulb low in the room is actually a good solution - my parents have a lobby that they want to prevent from getting too cold in the winter months and this is what I set up for them.  It's basically a very very cheap 100W space heater, that happens to produce about 4W of light energy.

If you want to heat substantial parts of your house in a cost effective way, and avoid the use of gas, then you need to look at ASHP or GSHP.