Electrical Contracting News (ECN) May 2017 | Page 39

HVAC
The key to cost
effective electric
heating is to match
a combination of
heat retention
and direct acting
appliances to the
lifestyle of the user.
The issue has been made worse by
the fact that the proportion of electrically
heated homes heated by direct acting
appliances has risen in recent years –
which means more people are paying over
the odds for their heating.
Direct acting appliances have their
purposes, they are best suited to very well
insulated properties or conservatories,
bathrooms and bedrooms where heat
is required in short bursts rather than
throughout the day. But the key to cost
effective electric heating is to match a
combination of heat retention and direct
acting appliances to the lifestyle of the user.
We are aware of some manufacturers
that still insist direct acting is the best
solution for the entire house, and this is
contributing to a distorted perception of
the effectiveness of electric heating – not
to mention unnecessarily high heating bills
for some users.
Manual storage
The other issue which must be addressed
when looking at fuel poverty in electrically
heated homes is that of outdated manual
storage heating systems. Around 70 per
cent of all homes with storage heaters use
manually controlled appliances and the
fi gure rises to 78 per cent in local authority
properties. Almost two-thirds (63 per cent)
of storage heated homes have appliances
that are more than 12 years old, a statistic
which is signifi cantly disproportionate to
any other heating appliance.
SPECIAL
FEATURE
This goes some way to demonstrate
the opportunity for upgrades, which can,
of course, present lucrative opportunities
for contractors, especially when multiplied
across large housing portfolios. In fact, the
DCLG estimates that arou