Miscellaneous Electric Heaters

Miscellaneous Electric Heaters

There are a variety of electric resistance heat emitters on the market.

ceiling mounted electric heater
This ceiling mounted electric heater with fan is controlled with a wall mounted timer switch.
elecric wall heater
Electric wall heater

Wall and ceiling mounted units are typically found in bathrooms.

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Envi wall heater.

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toekick blower
Toekick blower

Some electric heaters are used as toe kick heaters.

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Plugin electric heater
Plugin electric heater

It can be useful to have a plugin electric heater available in case of a heat emergency with your primary heating system.

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Forced hot air trunk lines and returns
Forced hot air trunk lines and returns. photo credit: Malcolm Koo

In-duct versions can be combined with ducted heat pumps to provide peak load heating. Ducted units can also be installed in existing hot air ducts served by oil or gas as a primary heating fuel. These can be used to offset fuel usage for people with solar who might have extra net metered credits.

Heat Loss

The two variables of of heat loss are a) geographic location, and b) building performance. Together they will determine the quantity of heat needed to maintain comfort.

Geographic location drives the building's “design day." Your design day is the difference in temperature between the inside and outside of your house on the theoretical coldest day of the year; so in the northeast we calculate a day that is -10ºf outside and comfortable 68ºf inside. This is referred to as the “delta-T” value. A typical delta-T for the northeast is 78º.

Building performance is the big one because there’s nothing we can do about geographic location. Today we can build a really tight thermal envelope, but most of our heating pollution comes from the millions of homes built over the last 100-150 years. We are getting better at buttoning-up those old buildings with insulation and weather sealing but weatherization is still  never going to be enough to overcome the heat loss from a 78º delta-T. That means we need heating systems that can quickly put a whole lot of heat back into those old houses on the days that are really cold.