The diagram below shows a number of different heating solutions plotted on a graph.
The view, from bottom-to-top shows appliances with increasing radiating effectiveness and the view from left to right shows appliances that are increasingly cheap to run.
Explanation of diagram:
The bottom-left quadrant is the worst: showing appliances that are ineffective radiators that are also expensive to run: like fan heaters and many types of electric (so-called) “Radiators”.
The top left quadrant shows appliances that are good radiators, like Electric Bar Fires, but which are expensive to run.
The bottom-right quadrant shows poor radiators that are nonetheless cheap to run (like Central heating)
The top right shows good radiators that are cheap to run (like Infrared).
“BUT!” you may say “Gas central heating appears to be as cheap to run as Infrared (on your graph).” And so it is, hour for hour.
But the graph also shows Gas Central heating is not as effectively radiant. This means that over any given day, to get the same level of comfort in a house, you would still have to run your gas central heating for more hours (typically 10) than infrared (typically 5) because you are not warming the environment with gas: just the air(which doesn’t hold heat at all well and tends to disappear through open doors, flues, letter-boxes etc.). So although hour for hour gas is as cheap (just slightly cheaper in fact) than Infrared, you have to run it twice as long for the same heating effect.
What does a purchase and running cost comparison look like?
The following diagram shows a like-for-like purchase and running cost comparison of an Infrared Heater with an electric heater correctly specified for the same size of room showing how – by only 1 year – total cost of ownership (purchase and running cost combined) is lower for Infrared than for the conventional solution.
| Infrared Heater | Eletric Radiator | ||
| Purchase cost | 1600 ש״ח | 500 ש״ח | |
| Power | 500W | 2500W | |
| Cost of Electricity per hour | 0.33 ש״ח | 1.65 ש״ח | |
| Total cost during the winter | 316.8 ש״ח | 1584 ש״ח | Winter 30 days for 4 month 8 hours per day |
| Total cost of ownership including purchasing cost | 1916,8 ש״ח | 2084 ש״ח |
YOU GOT YOUR MONEY BACK JUST IN ONE WINTER !!!!!