Heated towel rails have grown in popularity over the last twenty years, ever since founder of Bisque radiator designs, Geoffrey Ward, brought one back from a bike-riding excursion in France and believed the existing process by which towels were dried required someone like him to change it forever.
If you take a look around, whether it’s in the toilets of a department store or a jazz club, you are odds on to dry your hands on a towel hanging on a towel rail. Now you have concluded you want a towel radiator for your own en-suite. So what flavour of heated towel rail should you go for?
Do some research into whether you should have a standard chrome towel rail (a rail that connects to your central heating), an electric heated towel rail (one that plugs into your mains electricity) or a dual-fuel towel warmer (a rail that connects to your central heating system and to your mains electricity). If your house has pipes connecting to the central heating system in the room where you aim to install the chrome towel rail, then are able to have a standard towel radiator plumbed in. If you don't have pipes, it is possible to bring an electrician in and connect a heated towel rail to your mains electricity. A dual-fuel chrome towel warmer enables you to power the rail through the heating system at times when the heating is likely to be used. However during the warmer months, you can make use of electricity to switch on the towel rail.
Once you have come to a decision on how the power will reach your heated towel radiator, you can now make a decision on on the specifications. To choose the width and height, you could measure the gap between the inlet pipes in your place where you want the towel rail (if you have central heating in that bathroom). When looking at purchasing your new towel radiator, you are advised to pay attention to the ‘pipe centres’ measurement that should be included in the information on the heated towel rail. The pipe centres measurement is the distance between both pipes on the towel warmer and this should match up fairly closely to the distance between your pipes in your bathroom. You can then be satisfied you are selecting the suitable heated towel rail.
The heat output you need for your place you are putting your towel rail, can be a tad more challenging to get an accurate answer for because each bathroom is different. The level of heat of a heated towel radiator is measured in Watts or British Thermal Units (BTUs) and you can use the measurement you feel more comfortable with. It is estimated that you ought to have one hundred Watts warm up 1 sq.m. of floor space and a fast bit of moving numbers around will tell you what you must look for. Find out the length and width of your en-suite and multiply them together to get the size in square metres. Times that number by one hundred (Watts) and you have the approximate of Wattage you need for your room. To get the answer in British Thermal Units, you need to times the figure in Watts by 3.14 (due to the fact that 1 Watt = 3.14 BTUs).
Although it is possible, it is not usually advisable to install a chrome towel rail instead of a usual bathroom radiator. Sometimes a towel radiator on its own does not give off enough power in cooler months and can leave your room feeling in need of more warmth. A better decision would be to fit a towel warmer as well as a regular radiator.