Radiant Heating near you

Radiant is a description of how the heat travels, not of a single product, and the choices behind it differ enormously in running cost, installation and risk. These are the forms an Australian installer will quote.

Radiant heating is at its best where you want a person warm rather than a building warm: a bathroom used for twenty minutes, a study at the end of a hallway, a high-ceilinged room where heated air would simply rise out of reach, an old weatherboard with gaps that would defeat any attempt to warm the air. Because it heats surfaces, it also works in a space that is partly open to outside, which is why it is the only sensible option on a deck.

It is at its worst as a whole-house strategy. Electric resistance heating converts electricity to heat efficiently but buys that heat at retail electricity prices, whereas a reverse cycle air conditioner moves heat rather than making it and delivers several times more heat than the electricity it consumes. For a whole house in a southern Australian winter, that difference dominates every other consideration, and it is why Australian energy agencies consistently point households towards reverse cycle for general heating.

The honest brief is therefore a mixed one. Reverse cycle for the spaces you live in, radiant for the spaces you occupy briefly or cannot economically heat by air. Anyone quoting radiant panels for an entire house should be asked to explain what the running cost will look like against the alternative before you sign.

An unflued gas radiant heater puts everything the flame produces into the room, which is why ventilation is not optional with one and why they are unsuitable for bedrooms and bathrooms. Energy Safe Victoria's household advice on open-flued appliances is relevant to the flued versions too: do not operate exhaust fans at the same time as the heater, because lowering the pressure in the room can restrict or reverse the flue and drive combustion products back inside.

Radiant surfaces are also hot surfaces, and that is a separate hazard from combustion. A radiant element reaches a temperature that will ignite fabric placed against it and will burn a child or an elderly person who touches or falls against it. Clothing draped over a heater to dry is the classic Australian house fire, and it is caused by radiant heaters far more often than by ducted systems, because a radiant heater looks like a convenient warm rail.

Where an appliance is fixed, the clearances in the installation instructions are what keep it safe, and they apply to curtains, bedding, furniture, stored items and the shade structure above an outdoor heater. Where it is portable, the equivalent protection is a clear space around it, a hard flat surface under it, and no extension lead or power board. Any gas radiant appliance should be serviced on the same basis as other gas heating: at least once every two years by a qualified gasfitter who tests for carbon monoxide leakage.

Australia does not permit unlicensed people to do their own fixed electrical or gas work, and radiant heating sits in both camps depending on the fuel. Hard-wiring a panel, a strip heater or a bathroom heat lamp module is electrical work for a licensed electrical worker, who in most states issues a certificate for the work. Installing or servicing a gas radiant heater is gasfitting, and Energy Safe Victoria's requirement that the work be done by a licensed Type A gasfitter holding a photo identification card listing the work they may do is the Victorian expression of a rule that has an equivalent in every state.

Keep the certificate. It is the document that proves the work was done by someone entitled to do it, and it is what an insurer, a conveyancer or a subsequent gasfitter will ask for. For a gas appliance, keep the service history alongside it, because with radiant gas heating the service record is a safety record.

The drivers are the number of rooms, the output required in each, whether the existing switchboard and circuits can take the load, whether gas is involved and what the flue would require, and how difficult it is to get a cable or a gas line to the position you want the appliance in. A single bathroom module replaced like for like is a short visit. Panels through several rooms of a house whose switchboard is at its limit is a different project, and the switchboard work can be the larger half of it.

LokalMatch is where the job starts, not where it ends. Describe the rooms, what heating is there now, whether the house has gas, the age of the switchboard and your postcode, and electrical and gasfitting businesses covering your area contact you directly; those businesses pay LokalMatch for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not do the work, does not set or quote prices and does not vet, rank or recommend anyone, so ask for the running cost comparison and the compliance certificate in writing.