Introduction to the Electric Combi Boiler

If the only thing holding you back from enjoying the benefits of central heating powered by electricity is concern about the hassle of installation, you probably want to learn about the convenience of the electric combi boiler. This type of system involves a simple installation process, and it can connect directly to your existing wet system. It is an almost hassle-free process, and you do not have to worry about there being no gas line in your property. 

Great Energy-Efficiency with the Electric Combi Boiler

Keeping your home warm during the winter months can be an expensive business, and it seems to be getting worse every year. There can wastage with options like gas, but an electrical boiler is going to be 100 per cent energy-efficient. When this is combined with the fact that electricity is usually cheaper than other fuels, you can see there is a chance to make some real savings. The future is uncertain for carbon-based energy, and the likelihood is that these resources are going to be more expensive as stocks dwindle.

One of the other nice things about an electric combi boiler is you have no concerns about keeping it supplied with fuel. One of the real drawbacks of using oil to heat your home is it means having to get it delivered to you. It also involves paying in advance, and you are going to have to make room for an oil tank to store it. There has been an increase in home oil theft in recent years, but you are not going to have worry about this with an electric boiler. You can also sleep easier at night knowing that you are not going to be left without heat because of a delayed oil delivery.

An electric boiler will be a great addition to your home, but the benefits of electric heating do not end there. You might also want to consider something like panel heaters. These are great because they are a far more cost-effective way of heating up a large room. The other benefit of this system is that it heats the space rapidly, so you do not have to wait around. If you were looking for the ultimate comfort in your home, the electric combi boiler with panel heaters would make an unbeatable combination.

Is Your Home Ready to Benefit from an Electric Combi Boiler?

The sooner you install your combi boiler, the sooner you are going to benefit from having this as the heart of your central heating. Visit our site to find out more about your options, and to find the perfect boiler for your needs.

The Benefits of Panel Heaters

As governments, both centrally and locally, continue to promote ways to reduce carbon emissions in the UK, electricity – an energy source that can be produced using renewable technologies – is becoming the favoured method of heating for homes and businesses. Alongside electric boilers, panel heaters are the most popular choice of product for keeping properties warm,offering a number of great benefits.

Instant Heat

While the cost of electricity in relation to gas is an often spoken about element of electric heating, the efficiency of panel heaters is something that is often overlooked. Electric radiators such as the Visage and Elegance electric panel heaters from Electric Heating Supplies (EHS) contain a high-quality aluminium heating element across a large surface area. This allows radiators to warm up quickly and distribute heat in an effective and efficient way. In fact, no other type of energy source comes close to these electrically powered heaters in terms of efficiency – every penny spent on electricity is turned into heat.

Wall Mounted or Free-Standing

One of the great benefits of panel heaters and a feature that sets them apart from traditional wet system radiators is their versatility. Every panel heater and electric radiator from EHS come with the option of being wall mounted in the same way as a conventional radiator or fitted with castors so that it can be easily moved around the home as required. If there are rooms in your property where a wet system does not extend, this sort of versatility can be vital and heaters can be plugged into existing wall sockets or spur wired into existing storage heating sockets.

Perfect in Any Room

Panel heaters such as the Visage Digital Electric Radiator are designed to be IP 24 splash proof. This makes them suitable in bathrooms and other wet areas in the home – rooms where electricity would not typically be considered.

Full Heating Control

Perhaps the biggest benefit of all with panel heaters is their ability to give you full control over your heating. Both the Elegance and Visage Digital Electric Radiators come with an in-built thermostat that allows you to choose between three modes (comfort, economy and frost protection), set the temperature, and place heating on a timer. The option of doing this on a room-by-room basis lets you keep on top of your energy spend and ensure heating is provided as and when you need it.

Electric Heating Supplies is a leading electric heating company based in Blantyre, Scotland. The company is a specialist in electric radiators and panel heaters.

The Versatility of Electric Heating

As a homeowner, in order to truly benefit from your home heating system you need to ensure that it caters to your needs and works around the lifestyle of your family. With fuel costs and carbon emissions key issues in home heating, it is important to maximise the use of heat produced; this requires great versatility – the sort of resourcefulness that can only be achieved with electric heating.

Heating When You Need It

Electric heating is designed to provide you with immediate heat whenever you need it. You could argue that with thermostats, gas central heating allows you to configure heating to suit your needs; however, the time it takes for wet system radiators to heat up means that energy is often wasted. What’s more, with the radiator closest to the main thermostat needing to be switched on at all times, heat tends to be wasted in areas of the home where it is not needed, such as the hallway.

With electric wall panel heater systems, you have the option of plugging heaters into domestic wall sockets or spur wiring them so that they operate more like a traditional central heating set up. This alone makes them more versatile than gas, but also allows you to better control your heating.

If your room feels cold, simply walk over to the radiator and switch it on.

As electricity is 100% efficient, it heats up immediately and every unit of electricity that you pay for becomes heat. Unlike gas, this means you do not waste a single penny in heating up your home.

Heating Where You Need It

There are certain areas of the home – conservatories, sunrooms and loft conversions, for instance – where extending a traditional wet system may prove both problematic and expensive. In such areas, electric heating is the most logical solution. All electric radiators from Electric Heating Supplies can be fitted with castors, allowing them to be moved freely around the home to provide heat wherever it is needed.

Moving from the loft to the conservatory? Simply take a radiator with you.

There are also rooms within the home that may not be ideally suited to large standard radiators – electric heating once again has the solution: vertical heaters. From as little as 380mm wide, these heaters can be mounted on the wall to provide elegant, flexible, and space-saving home heating.

Versatility is essential in making the most of the heat you use; with electric heating, you will be able to benefit from every penny that you spend.

Electric Heaters: Is it Time You Switched?

For most homeowners in the UK, gas heating and 'wet' system radiators are the standard in home heating. These radiators connect to the central boiler and heating is supplied using hot water circulated by pumps. The biggest benefit of gas over electric heating is that it is more energy efficient; fuel bills are considerably less using gas than if you are plugging heaters into a socket. So why, then, are many people choosing electric over gas? Surely you want to heat your home using the cheapest method available, right. Well, per kWh cost aside, electric heating offers a range of benefits that gas does not; benefits that justify any increased usage expense.

Installation

In terms of product price, an electric heater and a wet system radiator are similarly matched. However, when it comes to installation the former is a much better solution. Installing electric heating simply requires you to find a spot for your heater and plug it in. It really is as easy as that, and you do not need the help of any plumber or DIY expert. Unfortunately, the same simplicity cannot be extended to wet system radiators, which will often require new pipework and significant labour.

Portability

If you visit Electric-heatingsupplies.co.uk, you will notice that we offer castors, designed to allow for temporary heating solutions in conservatories, sun rooms are wherever else in the home that requires some instant heat. As electric heaters operate via the mains, the portability they offer is something that gas heaters are unable to compete with. Whenever and wherever you need heat, you can rely on an electric heater.

Flexible Heating

Similar to portability, electric heating is a very flexible heating solution and can be switched on and off as you need it. If you purchase a modern digital radiator, you will also get the benefit of a built-in thermostat and control panel that allows you to remain in full control of your heating – very useful in the unpredictable UK climate!

Environmental Friendliness

The final, but perhaps the most significant, benefit of electric heating is the environmental friendliness that such a solution offers. In a world where governments are doing all they can to reduce the carbon footprint of citizens, electric heaters are a sustainable resource that reduces reliance on gas and lowers CO2 emissions.

Electric heating might be less energy efficient than gas, but with the benefits that it offers, does that really matter?

Do We Still Need Storage Heaters?

In the 1970s, UK energy companies came up with the Economy 7 tariff as a way to get homeowners to use more electricity during the night by offering cheaper electricity during unsociable hours. In order for people to take advantage of the tariff, storage heaters became the must-have electronic heating solution.

These heaters were installed to 'charge' during the night when the electricity was cheap and then emit the stored heat throughout the day from its ceramic blocks and fan-assisted dissipater. To keep track of how much electricity was being used, the storage heater was connected to a two-tariff meter, which would provide owners with a day and night rate on their bill.

Storage heaters are still in use today across the UK and still provide great benefits to people that are unable to access the gas grid to install a gas central heating system in their home as well as to those who produce their own electricity through solar PV or wind turbine. However, the traditional models that became popular in the 1970s have given way to more effective alternatives: electric radiators and panel heaters.

Comprehensive Electric Heating

Besides taking advantage of cheaper electricity, the major benefit of storage heaters was, and still is, that they are cheaper to install, maintain, and run as central heating systems. This remains the case with modern electric heating supplies. However, some of the drawbacks of the original heaters have been addressed, the two most significant being the unavoidable heating of a property overnight as the heater charged; and the size of the heater dictating how much charge it can take.

Modern electric radiators and panel heaters have much more in common with conventional 'wet' radiators than storage heaters, designed to look the same, giving them aesthetic appeal.

In terms of heat output, the electric heating supplies of today are much more advanced. Both radiators and panel heaters are available in a range of size and power output options, and are capable of providing you with heat whenever you need it – no charge necessary. Newer digital panel heaters are also equipped with built in thermostats that allow you to fully control heating for enhanced comfort and lower energy usage.

So, back to the original question: do we still need storage heaters? Yes and no.

Do we need the original storage heater designs that were introduced in the 1970s? No. Do we need their 21st century alternative? Yes, we definitely do.

Electric Heating - Because Not All Homes Have Gas

For the majority of homeowners in the UK, connection to the main gas grid is something that is taken for granted. Moreover, where gas is available, wet system central heating generally follows. However, what about the homes and people that do not have access to mains gas - what do they do?

 

 According to the government, small modern properties are the least likely to have a gas connection and statistics show that 41 per cent of purpose built flats and 31 per cent of converted flats have no gas meter. And it's not just flats without gas; a significant percentage of bungalows and detached houses are without a gas supply, while around 10 per cent of semi-detached, end and mid-terrace houses in the UK are also off the gas grid. Fortunately, not having a gas supply does not mean not having heating and, if you are considering moving into a property without a gas meter, electric heating is the perfect solution.

Electric Heaters

Electric heating is most commonly associated with storage heaters that can be plugged in to provide heat when you need it. These storage heaters are still very useful in heating homes; however, more comprehensive digital panel heaters, which allow heating to be controlled via a built-in thermostat and control panel, are slowly becoming more popular.

Homeowners that prefer the conventional look of 'wet' system radiators can also benefit from electric heating thanks to Electrical Heating Supplies' range of plug-in radiators. These are designed to look and perform in the same way as traditional water-circulating radiators and are available in a wide range of size and power output options to accommodate any room in a property.

Electric boilers
Electric and digital radiators are brilliant at providing the heat you need, but what about hot water for showering? That problem is solved by the EHS range of electric boilers. Using the same wiring as an electric shower, these boilers require none of the pipework of a gas central heating system installation (standard radiators and valves can be used if required), run more efficiently, and emit none of the noxious fumes that are common with gas.

Electric boilers come in a range of options to suit your heating/water and space needs, they are also cheaper to buy and can be fitted much quicker than their gas counterparts.

Do not let a lack of a gas supply put you off moving into a home, visit our site today and go electric.

Electric Boilers: The Sustainable Heating Solution

According to The Guardian, the average UK individual carbon footprint is 16.28 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year; around 27 per cent of the CO2 produced in this country comes directly from household energy use.

By making our households more efficient, we can make huge reductions in the CO2 emissions produced in the UK and help provide a better planet for future generations. One of the best ways to slash CO2 in the long term is by switching to sustainable energy and installing an electric heating boiler.

 

The Long Term Need for Electric Heating

Along with the overuse of appliances, the energy we use to heat our homes is the biggest reason for our large individual carbon footprint. The easiest way to collectively slash carbon emissions in the UK would be if we all just stopped using our central heating systems but, of course, this is not possible. We need to heat our homes and have hot water all year round; there is no getting away from that. We just need to supply it in a more sustainable way,which means reducing our reliance on fossil fuels such as coal, gas, and oil.

In the long run, the use of fossil fuels will decrease. Experts predict that, with increasing demand, oil could be depleted by 2055 and natural gas by 2072.  As electricity is capable of being generated from renewable energy sources such as wind, more heating will be supplied in this manner.

Electric Combi Boilers

As a home owner, regardless of what type of heating system you use, the first thing you should do to help reduce CO2 emissions is to ensure your home is properly insulated. The more heat that escapes from your property, the more energy you use.

The second thing you should do is install an electric combi boiler.

Combi, or combination, boilers are designed to heat hot water and run the heating; however, unlike gas systems they require no water tank. Electric boilers require none of the pipework needed for traditional wet systems and are much easier to install as a result - 90 per cent of the installation being mechanical and the remaining 10 per cent electrical.The most crucial aspect of all, however, is the fact that these boilers emit no harmful fumes or gases into the atmosphere.

An electric heating boiler does cost more to run than a gas equivalent, but it is cheaper to buy and install. Besides, as a long-term sustainable heating solution, there really is no other choice.