Kitchen - get rid of radiator or not? + advice on electric plinth heaters?

[DueinSeptember]

Redesigning our kitchen at the moment. It's a fairly narrow kitchen 2.4m wide and 4.5m long.

We have a radiator at one end of the room.

I guess we could either:

• keep the radiator and have two lengths of worktop/units down either side of the kitchen

-or get rid of the radiator (perhaps install electric plinth heaters) and make a U shape kitchen. Thing is, with the narrowness of the kitchen it does not really gain much more storage space if we do this, so is it really worth it.

We've got to get an electrician in to install sockets, so I guess it would be ok to install one for the plinth heater. Can you use them with laminate flooring?

I've looked into underfloor heating, but I think it would be quite expensive and I don't fancy having to rip up the existing floor as we are in a bit of a rush to get the house renovated by my baby's due date in September.

Any views on this? Thanks.

It would prob look better as a U shape - would have less of a corridor feel. And you would add 1.2m of base units which could get you six drawers of which 4 could be deep - very useful. You would have two corner units which would mean some things would be less accessible but then some things aren't used everyday. Plus an extra 1.2m of worktop space...v useful.
Sorry, can't be any help on plinth heaters though.

A kitchen designer told me that you can get some good plinth heaters now.

If you want some kitchen advice here can you post your plans so we can have a look and then advise?

Thanks - I'd like to upload them, but they are in paper form at the moment. Perhaps I could scan them later this evening and pop them on my profile (if I can work out how to use my scanner printer thingy!).

I may pop into B&Q now and see if they can draw up a U-shape one to compare with.

You could always take a digital photo of the plans and post that on your profile?

I asked my central heating engineer/plumber mate about plinth heaters recently, and his words were, "utter shite". HTH

We recently redid our kitchen, taking out the radiator and adding two plinth heaters. They don't have to be electric, you can get ones that tap into your existing hot water system for the heat, then just use electricity for the fan.

We've not had any problem with ours, they kept the room warm when the weather was cooler and, living under the counters, take up no noticeable space.

The negatives are that they do use some electricity, whereas normal radiators don't; though I can't say we've noticed a jump in our usage. They're also just the right level for a toddler to play with turning them on and off a lot...

Also, the plinth heaters (in particular the fans) are audible when they're running. Not ridiculously so, but there is a background hum which is comparable to the hum of the fridge. Might be a problem for some people, but we don't tend to notice!

On our models, the fans only operate when the heating is on (I think they're temperature activated) and can be manually turned off if you particularly want silence. Though I expect they'd be a lot less efficient that way!

Thanks everyone, it looks like it should be possible then. I'm hoping to get plans from Howdens in the post today too so I'll try and pop them all up later. -(Sorry am slow, am trying to get loads of things sorted in the house all at the same time and getting the back bedroom plastered, so've been busy peeling wallpaper -Arghhhh!!!)

I wouldn't put a U shape in to be honest. Your kitchen is 2.4m wide. Your cupboards are 600 deep so the "gain" would be a cupboard 1.2m wide and 2 bloody annoying corner storage areas of the same overall size for crap and spiders to live in.

I would personally prefer more useable worksurface and less cupboards but at least I can use them all.

You could also put a wet rad under the plinth perhaps with a small thermostatic fan. You should already have the plumbing there just need to find the right rad. Like this