Blog / variotherm

Wall heating is the ideal solution when using eco-joists or I-Beam joists or timber frame constructions. As the joists can’t be notched and usually have the flooring down, underfloor heating can be difficult to fit. You would have to fit from below or raise the floor above and both of these options are not very cost effective, wall heating solves both these problems. The system can produce 201W/m2 @ 50 degree flow temperature and 20 degree room temperature. To put this into perspective, a screed floor heating system with tiles (the best output) is approximately 150W/m2, the wall heating has a 33% better output! A new build property is often calculated at a heating requirement of 40W/m2 and a refurbishment project is 60-80W/m2. Because of this output and the most common heating requirements of a build project, it’s easy to see that the wall heating system only requires 30-50% of the equivalent space that a floor system would require to heat a room. For example, a 20m2 room would require 6-10m2 of wall heating. 2m x 0.6m panels are the most commonly used therefore only 5 linear meters of wall space would usually be sufficient! The panels are made of gypsum fibre which warms, creating thermal mass. 11.6mm pipe is pre-fitted to the panels at 75mm spacing and the panels are ‘daisy chained’ and connected to a port on a distribution manifold via 16mm pipe to a maximum of 6.25m2 per port. The panels should be fitted to a stud type wall and insulated. The panels can be skimmed over and painted, wallpapered or tiled.

Variotherm modular wall heating system is a modern, high output, efficient and cost effective heating solution that can be installed where other heating methods can’t be used.

Wall heating systems work very similar to underfloor heating in that they heat a room predominantly by radiation (like the sun) as a result of pumping warm water through looped pipes. Wall heating systems are often used as an alternative to UFH in renovation projects. Until the recent additions of retrofit and wall heating systems, installing ufh resulted in the floor having to be excavated. Although Retrofit UFH kits have eliminated the need to fully excavate flooring, this does not mean wall heating systems are now redundant. It is not always economically viable to re-lay flooring after installing ufh such as in renovations of older homes.