How can the correct heating technology help thermal comfort? The experts at Rointe take a closer look.
Thermal comfort is one of the keys to feeling comfortable in a home or room, and is a crucial aspect for improving day-to-day living. But do you really know how to achieve it? When designing a heating system, it is easy to forget to give thermal comfort the importance it deserves. There are, however, different methods to measure the thermal comfort of a space.
What is thermal comfort?
It’s a set of conditions which include air temperature, movement and humidity that all contribute towards a pleasant space. Its measurement is subjective as it depends on the subject’s feeling of thermal satisfaction. Depending on individual needs, you can reduce energy costs whilst maintaining the maximum level of thermal comfort.
When designing a heating system, consider thermal comfort to achieve:
- Reduction in heat loss
- Balanced energy consumption
- An increase in energy savings
- An increase in the well-being and health of the user.
What are the key parameters for optimum thermal comfort?
There are six principles of thermal comfort to deliberate when choosing or designing a heating system:
- The type of clothing worn by the user
- The temperature of the room
- Any physical activity the space is designed for
- The air speed within the room
- The rooms’ relative humidity
- The average radiant temperature of the room.
The Luesden and Freymark standard for comfortable warmth is 18-22ºC for normal, healthy adults who are appropriately dressed. For those with respiratory problems or allergies the WHO recommends no less than 16ºC, and for the sick, disabled, very old or very young, a minimum of 20ºC.
With a temperature set to around 20ºC in winter individuals can maintain the optimum level of thermal comfort, without increasing energy expenditure.
Did you know that decreasing the temperature by just 1ºC can reduce a heating bill by up to £85 per year? We also recommend keeping the airspeed of a heating system below 0.1 m/s and the relative humidity of the space between 40-70%.
Falling outside of these parameters can have a negative impact on productivity and health, like sleep quality. Studies have shown that bedrooms with high temperatures lower the quality of sleep.
Did you also realise that 90% of our time is spent indoors, with the majority in working environments and homes? So, maintaining an optimum standard of thermal comfort is important for everyone. High temperatures combined with high relative humidity serves to reduce thermal comfort and indoor air quality.
What does Rointe offer to help achieve maximum thermal comfort?
Rointe radiators have been designed for comfort and efficiency, offering some of the following benefits:
- Best cost/conductivity material use: the aluminium of our radiators, together with their design, allows the steady increase of air temperature when circulating through the radiator internal fins.
- Thermal stability: the thermal fluid inside the radiator ensures that the temperature remains stable.
- Efficient and uniform heating: this is due to thermal resistance located at the bottom of the radiator.
- Natural humidity and temperature stability: the air rises gently in temperature as it passes through the radiator, creating a gentle natural convection cycle in your space.
All Rointe radiators and towel rails include patented energy-saving technologies, developed exclusively by our electric heating experts, to increase savings in the most efficient way without reducing comfort. We call it ‘Fuzzy Logic Energy Control’ technology.
This technology, together with Rointe’s energy-saving functions, achieves an equivalent consumption coefficient of only 38% to maintain a stable temperature of 21ºC for 24 hours. A Rointe radiator will use, on average, only 38% of its nominal power once a steady working rate has been achieved.
What is Fuzzy Logic Energy Control?
Developed in-house by Rointe, Fuzzy Logic Energy Control is a specialised efficiency technology that improves the energy management required to maintain a stable temperature by accurately analysing thermal variations within ± 0.25ºC. Together with high purity aluminium and high heat transfer thermal fluid, our low consumption technology transfers heat to the atmosphere in the most efficient way for the user’s warmth and comfort.
How does it work?
By analysing temperature variations with an accuracy of ± 0.1ºC and sending readings every minute to the microprocessor, we ensure that the exact amount of energy is sent to the heating element at any given time. The heat generated is transferred to the thermal fluid and the aluminium that forms the radiator, so that it is dissipated in the most efficient way. The two main benefits of the use of such technology are:
Energy optimisation: it predicts the amount of energy required at each moment until the set temperature is reached. This technology proportionally reduces the energy demand necessary to reach the desired temperature, smoothing the initial curve by damping the temperature peak.
Temperature stabilisation: once the room has reached the set temperature, the Fuzzy Logic Energy Control technology generates micro-cuts in the energy consumption of the heating element to maintain a stable temperature with a thermal variation of ± 0.1˚C.
In addition, it allows you to achieve an equivalent coefficient of consumption of 38% of the nominal power of the product, which translates into energy savings during the operation of the radiator.
Defined by Rointe, the equivalent coefficient consumption ratio is used to calculate the effective power (or average power of use) of our products based on their nominal power.
Nominal Power X Equivalent Coefficient Consumption Ratio = Effective Power
So, for example, take one of our radiators with 990 watts then multiply by the equivalent coefficient consumption at 38%. This gives an effective power of 376 watts for the radiator, once the steady working rate has been achieved (normally after around 45 minutes of heating on full power).
Test results
In an independent laboratory test carried out by BSRIA, a Rointe 1,430 W radiator with Optimizer Energy Plus technology was tested. This concluded that to maintain a room temperature of 21ºC with a variation of only ± 0.25ºC during a period of 24 hours, the radiator only needed an average of 572 W or 40% of its nominal power.
Improving energy efficiency
At Rointe, we wanted to develop a newer technology that would improve energy efficiency even further. Fuzzy Logic Energy Control improves the algorithm of our previous technology, Optimiser Energy Plus.
In a comparative test, carried out in a fair climatic chamber, we tested the latest low consumption technology (Fuzzy Logic Energy Control) against the previous one. This concluded that Fuzzy Logic Energy Control was able to save a further 6% of energy and reduce the equivalent coefficient of consumption to 38% – our best ever results.
Get more details on Rointe’s range of radiators with energy saving controls here
