Kick Plate Floor Heaters

The new kitchens are marvels of new storage techniques. Pantries and base cabinet setups line the walls leaving little room for heating elements or ductwork down on the floor where it is needed. So unless you are willing to use in-floor radiant heating there are few other options other than a radiant heat source from the ceiling. And this takes a long time to get doen to the feet!

A good compromise is the kick plate heater, named because the unit fits underneath the base cabinet and produces an airflow horizontally from a fan inside. The heat source is an element which can be either 240 or 110 volts depending on the unit. Some heaters actually come with a switch where the voltage can be changed to either 110 or 220. This is common in European countries.

The nice thing about a kick-plate heater is that is gets hot air to the area where it is needed quickly. At 750 and 1500 watts respectively they do not have to be on for very long to get the desired effect.

Installing a kick plate heater requires an electrician to hook up the power. The thermostat has to be wired as well. The unit, itself, goes underneath a base cabinet in an area where it will spread heat to to the biggest area. in other words don’t have it pointing at the island because the heat will be confined.

There are many styles of grills to cover the kick plate heater, from brass to wood. As for price, they start at around $120 and can go above $300 for a high output heater.

Electrify Your Floor

These days the price of all energy is going up so that unless you have the room on your property for a geothermal heat pump you will paying for an increasing fuel load. And sometimes when it comes to looking at heatings it pays to see it from the ground up.

New homes with slab-on-grade construction are being built with in-floor radiant heat. Loops of plastic pipe are set on the concrete subfloor and then covered with a second layer. The pipes are hooked up to a water heater which can be powered by electric, oil or natural gas. This is ideal because cement has an excellent thermal mass and will give off heat long after the hot water shuts off. Different zones can be controlled by thermostats to decide the heat in each room.

This type of heating also puts direct electrical wiring into the fold as a competitor to the boiler systems. On most floors wire is strung out on clips set on the subfloor. This floor can be wood, tile or almost any material used to make subfloors. The flooring cement is then poured over the wiring and the floor leveled off. The wire is then hooked up to a thermostat.

Whether this is cheaper than oil is debatable because electricity goes right to the wire and heats the tile whereas oil or electricity has to heat water first before heating the floor. It is, however, cheaper to install and maintain

The optimum way to enhance this system is through a ceiling fan which distribute the heat through the home. But even without this the heat will rise and add comfort for the area.