We’ve all received an energy bill at some point in our lives that we weren’t expecting. Perhaps after a particularly cold winter or a period of illness or absence from work. That’s because the bulk of household energy expenses, particularly in Europe and the US, go on home heating.
In most homes, the standard heating solution of choice is a gas central heating system. Yes, there are those who have moved away from this and on to solar panel generation and electric heaters – we’ll get to those in a second – but most of us are resigned to using a fairly rudimentary thermostat which controls the temperature of our entire home. With a central heating system, the thermostat is usually placed in a convenient area in the living room or porch, and we can tinker the dial to 19 degrees C or 23 degrees C depending on how warm we’d like our homes to be. But what if you’re in the living room for an entire evening and feel the chill? The answer is to turn the thermostat up, but that means all the radiators in your home are going to come on, even those located in rooms which you might not even venture into that evening such as a study or spare room. That’s a lot of wasted heat.
For those who have moved on and gotten past gas central heating systems, a new world of customisation and programming awaits. Electric radiators are perhaps the most common form of post-gas generation heating, and good ones will come equipped with extremely accurate thermostats. Did you know that there are currently electric radiators on the market which are accurate to within fractions of a degree? Storage heaters have also experience a boost in technology, offering an almost parallel level of control which was previously unheard of.
The programming ability built-in to electric heating solutions allows incredible flexibility. You could have each room in your home running on its own schedule, and never worry for a moment that you’re unnecessarily heating a room or wasting heat. Your study could be programmed to only heat up during office hours, the living room might only heat up on an evening when you’ve finished work – and the kitchen could pretty much take care of itself in most cases. As technology improves and we take steps to greener home heating, so too will our ability to closely govern out heating systems and work at lowering our carbon footprint even further.