It Is Official, Finally

Finally what has been deduced by common sense for years has now been made official. The traditional convectional radiator system has been ousted for its lack of energy efficiency by an alteration in the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) rating by the Building Research Establishment (BRE).

The BRE are an organisation who research and consult on fire, security and sustainability products and services. In 2005 SAP was introduced for the assessment of the compliance of new dwellings within UK building regulations, covering the typical annual space and water heating costs along with CO2 emissions.

The European Association for Surface Heating and Cooling (Eu-ray) commissioned a two year trial in three separate European cities in which different houses were heated with a range of different systems. The results came back in 2007 showing that electric underfloor heating systems use 5% less energy than a radiator system.

This is not new heating news to many as the energy inefficiencies of convectional systems are relatively obvious. With radiators the whole house is heated and the hot air rises to the ceiling before working its way down and in houses with poor insulation can sometimes fail to heat the whole room. With underfloor heating specific rooms can be controlled with a thermostat, heating from the ground up.

The trials were then taken into account by the BRE and in the SAP2005-9.82 specification published in August this year, houses with underfloor heating will have a better SAP rating than those with a radiator heating system. This is of course taking into account that other variables are the same, such as appropriate insulation and double-glazed windows.

Other heating technologies associated with underfloor heating such as heat pumps and geothermal heat pumps can reduce energy consumption up to 30%, however these heating systems are considerably more expensive to install than standard domestic electrical underfloor heating kits.