Tell me about heated towel rails/radiators in bathrooms!

[ampere]

Am confused: We have just bought a 10 year old house with conventional boiler driven central heating. There are normal radiators in the bathrooms, over which we cram damp towels.

I want to revamp the system a bit. My thought was to put a towel rail shaped radiator in place of the normal radiator BUT that wouldn't work in the summer! Someone says you can put in a radiator that runs off both the CH system or the hotwater system so you can get warmth thru the radiator any time of the year.

I am also informed that an electric heated towel rail won't warm a room properly and that you'll need conventional CH radiators as well.

What's the modern solution?

My towel radiator is linked to the ch so it only works when we have the ch on, but in the summer the towels jsut go on the line to air/dry.

We've got an electric towel rail in our shower room, and it warms the room very effectively. Though admittedly it's not a huge room - about 7 feet square.

We have a heated towel rail and a radiator in the bathroom as its a big room and, as you say,a towel rail can't be covered in towels and heat the room. Ours is heated by the CH though.

You can get ones that have a towel rail bit around the outside and a radiator bit in the middle, where the radiator is heated by the CH/boiler and the towel rail bit is electric. Only problem is I'm not sure where you get them (but you can get them as the ILs have one)

We have just done up our bathroom and, as the house doesn't have central heating, wanted / needed a towel rail. We looked long and hard, but decided to buy an electric rail by deLonghi. It is fantastic - not only does it warm towels it acts as a radiator (with timing functions, frost protections and so on), it also has a fan on the bottom so can provide instant heat for a period of time (which you can set quite easily).

All this for c.£350, plus fitting - which wasn't much as we were doing up the bathroom anyway.

We are very very happy with it.

However, it is a stand alone thing, wouldn't work as part of an existing heating system.

If you fit the bathroom radiator/towel rail between the boiler and the three way control valve (the bit that decides whether to send the hot water around the central heating, intothe hot water tank coil, or both) then it will heat up when the either the hot water is on or the central heating is on.
However, plumbers shook their heads and muttered when I pointed this out to them, despite the fact that my boiler is in the bathroom, so it would have meant about a foot extra plumbing at the most.

Avoid like the plague, unless they do give out heat. We were in rental with such a radiator and the bathroom (north facing) was freezing. I suppose expensive types might work, but the cheap ones are pants.

I am now renting elsewhere with conventional radiator, still north facing bathroom but it's warm and toasty, even the tiles are lukewarm (there is no undefloor heating).

We've got ours plumbed in as choccyp1g described and as suggested by our plumber! It works just fine and means that we can get our towels dry easily all year round and it warms the room which is still quite useful even when the CH is off for the summer. In terms of effectiveness it's just the same as a normal radiator, because that's what it is, just a different shape.