Bathroom/towel heating in summer

[RogerS]

Just wondered what you guys did? Summer comes, central heating off but SWMBO still likes a warm bathroom and, let's face it, UK summers are usually pants.

My thoughts tend towards electric towel rails but then 'towel rail and a CH radiator' in the same room'?

 

[AndyP]

I thought the ususal thing to do was add the bathroom radiator on some sort of continuous circuit linked to the hot water.

 

[Rod]

We've got heated towel rails in our bathrooms - heated by CH then electrical element as and when required when CH turned off.
Summers are normally warm in the south [emoji41]

Rod

 

[Harv-53]

Roger
Take a look at this dual fuel radiator,when the central heating is off you can have this on a timer to electrically heat it up
https://www.victorianplumbing.co.uk/bur ... -trafalgar

 

[Woodster]

Many heated towel rails will take an after market electrical heater provided you have a suitable electrical feed for it. It can be controlled either by a thermostat or a timer. You can get timers built into a switched fused spur for neatness.

http://www.geyser.co.uk/timeguard-combi ... -2137.html

 

[Robert]

We don't turn the heating off in the summer, we just set the thermostat a bit lower. If there was a particularly cold morning in summer it would come on but in practice it never does.
So our summer norm is towels hanging on cold towel radiators. we have 2 towel rads in the bathroom as they don't give that much heat out with towels on them.

 

[9fingers]

Although quite unusual, our bathroom radiator is heated from any excess energy in the thermal store which is filled with two sources of solar energy (PV and thermal). This is solely about dumping the excess energy to prevent the store from boiling. Heating the bathroom is purely a consequence
In practise there is absolutely no need to heat a bathroom if the weather is such that the rest of house does not need the heating on.

Bob

 

[RogerS]

....
In practise there is absolutely no need to heat a bathroom if the weather is such that the rest of house does not need the heating on.

Bob

You've not met SWMBO!

Thanks all for the heads up re dual fuel (that's the search term I was missing) radiators.

Andy, in the UK the only bathroom radiators that I know of are if you have a system that needs a heat leak.

 

[Doug]

I thought the ususal thing to do was add the bathroom radiator on some sort of continuous circuit linked to the hot water.

Before fully pumped systems it was common for the bathroom rad to be fed off the primary circulation pipes to the cylinder which were gravity fed, this meant any time the hot water was being heated so was the bathroom radiator. As heat up time of the cylinder was longer when gravity fed & generally wasn't controlled by a thermostat unlike a pumped system the rad had time to heat the bathroom.

There are still a few ways to independently heat a bathroom rad, as has been said you can fit an electric element. You can also install a zone valve & provide a circuit just for bathroom radiators, I've done this previously particularly where there has been several bathrooms.

The most unusual way I've seen (wasteful) was a brass towel warmer which was fed directly off the hot water cylinder, positioned above cylinder height on the bathroom wall the cylinder was the other side of the wall. Basically the towel warmer just gave off the heat of the water in the cylinder, though as the cylinder was gravity fed working off the boiler stat the heat loss wasn't noticed, though rather wasteful on gas.

 

[TrimTheKing]

Our bathroom towel rails are heated as above, from the hot water loop not the CH.

Cheers
Mark


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[AndyP]

Doug has perfectly explained what I was thing of. Just checked with my father who has just that system in his bungalow. As well as providing warm towels he maintains that it also helps reduce condensation and aids drying of towels when wet.