Element for heated towel rail

[vivienz]

I have 2 heated towel radiators in my bathrooms that are wired to come on with the electric UFH. Can anyone recommend some not too clunky/expensive elements to put in these?

Thanks!

[Jeremy Harris]

My advice is to either go for a low power element (not more than 150 W) or use a thermostatically controlled one, as I've found that the larger of our two towel rails can make that bathroom a bit too warm.  We have the towel rails on a circuit switched by a time switch, so they are only on for a couple of hours in the morning and evening, and that helps.

 

The other slight snag I've found with the wide, short, towel rail is that it doesn't heat up at the bottom properly.  I have a suspicion that this may be due to the hot part of the element starting some way up from the base, so it doesn't create enough warm water low down to draw in cooler water from the very lowest rail in the thing.

 

For standard elements, length is related to power output, starting with a relatively short (~300mm) 120 W element and going up to maybe 600mm for a 1 kW element (which would be way to big for pretty much any towel rail).  This may affect choice, as sometimes there can be a length restriction imposed by the design of the rail (our long one won't accept an element over ~ 350mm long).

 

One snag with fitting an element into a "dual fuel" towel rail is that you inevitably end up with a tee piece where the element fits, so that the element and the water connection can share the same port on the towel rail.  These can look a bit clunky, but I'm not sure there's an easy way around this. 

 

Other than the above observations, I'd say that the elements themselves are all pretty much of a muchness, with the main difference being the style and finish of any control box they may include at the base, for setting temperature, on time delay, etc.