Given that infrared heating is such a new technology and that not many people know about it, it can be quite difficult to assess how many panels you need for different areas of your home.
How do you know how many watts you need for any given room?
That’s what we’re going to help with here, more specifically, we’re going to be looking at varying sizes of living room, and seeing what options we have with regards to which IR panel we need, and how many.
The Basics Of Calculating How Many IR Panels You Need
Firstly, you’ll need to work out the volume of your living room. You can calculate this by multiplying the length of the room by the width, and then multiplying the result by the height. Provided your initial measurements were in metres, your result will be in m3.
Using the table below, you can see how many watts you need per m3. This is dependent on how well insulated your home is.
|
Level of Insulation |
Watts per m3 Required |
|
Poor Insulation (home built pre-1930) |
35W per m3 |
|
Moderate Insulation (home built between 1930-1980) |
30W per m3 |
|
Good Insulation (home built post 1980, or has been reinsulated) |
25W per m3 |
By multiplying the volume of your room by the watts per m3, you can work out how much power you need for your living room. You can find a more detailed explanation of this process over at our how to buy IR heating panels guide.
Let’s go through some examples of the most common sized living rooms, based on UK averages.
Example 1: The Average Sized UK Living Room
Let’s look at an average sized living room, measuring 4.8 x 4.8 x 2.5m. The volume of this room is all these values multiplied by each other – which gives us 57.6m3.
The house was built in 1974 and thus has moderately good insulation. For this reason, we need 30w per m3.
This means the total wattage required for the room is 25 x 57.6. This equals 1728W.
From here, we can choose what kind of panel setup we need. One option is to purchase two of our 795 x 1195mm 900W IR heating panels, and placing them at either end of the room.
Don’t forget this 900W panel is available with one of your own images on it too, adding a personal touch to it. You can find out how to order custom image IR panel heaters in our guide.
Alternatively, we could opt for a single 1200W IR panel, paired with a 580W panel for example.
Example 2: A Below Average Sized UK Living Room
This time, our living room is a smaller – measuring 3.6 x 3.6 x 2.5m. This means the volume is 32.4m3.
The home was built in 1940 but the walls were reinsulated 10 years ago, so it’s very well insulated. We’ll only need 20W per m3. Multiplying 32.4m3 by 20W gives us 810W.
Again, we have a couple of options open to us. A single 900W NXT Gen Infrared Heating Panel would be ideal. Depending on your choice of decor, our 900W Washing Landscape IR Panel might be even better, adding a bit of life to your heater.
The other option is to install three 595 x 595 350W IR Panels, which would spread the distribution across the living room.
Example 3: An Above Average Sized UK Living Room
Our third living room is inside a house that was built way back at the beginning of the 20th century, so it’s really poorly insulated. It measures 5.4 x 3.9 x 3.
The volume of the room works out as 63.18m3, and we’ll need 30W per cubic metre. This gives us a total wattage of 2211W.
There’s no getting around the fact that a single IR panel will not suffice here. Instead, we could look at either a set of three 595 x 1195mm 700W IR panels, or a single 2.4kW Zenos IR Bar Heater.
Easy When You Know How
The process of calculating the required wattage for a living room is relatively simple. With just a measuring tape, a calculator and a bit of knowledge about your home, you can be ready to order your panels within minutes.
If you need any kind of assistance when ordering your panels, give us a call on 0116 321 4124, or send us an email to sales@suryaheating.co.uk.
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