Cheap Office Heating

Tubular Heater

Tubular heating can be a cost effective way of keeping your office warm

When running a business or being charged with the responsibility of keeping costs down, one key area is energy consumption. It’s an overhead that can be difficult to keep under control, yet you need adequate heat and it’s vital to ensure you and everyone else is warm enough to be able to focus properly – and ‘the cold office’ is a key complaint when people are polled about their working conditions.

Office use

Of course, an office can range from a small box room in a home to a larger open plan area accommodating scores of employees. Some offices aren’t used all day every day while some are used round the clock in environments where varying shifts operate.

It may be that your small office may just need keeping from getting too cold and frosty and is ‘topped up’ with stronger heat only when occupied. In this instance, some electric tube heaters providing cheap background heat could be ideal with an option to add more heat if required such as with an oil filled radiator or convection heater.

The tubular heater

As its name suggests, a tubular heater is a tube shaped heater ranging in size from around one to six feet and typically providing some 60w output per foot. They can be plugged into a standard power socket or hard wired to the electricity supply depending on what model you specify.

They can be used singly or in banks of several depending on heating demands, and are usually thermostatically controlled so constant background heat can be provided. Various accessories can be specified such as mounting brackets, timers and heater guards.

Tubular heaters are a very cost effective background heat option; they can cost as little as half a pence per hour to run and their compact size means they’re ideal where space is at a premium.

They offer an ideal heating ‘base’ to keep an office heated cheaply, and other methods can be deployed to add to the heat by using higher output heating such as a convection heater or oil filled radiator to give the room a ‘blast’.

To complement tubular heating

There are various options to provide the ‘extra’ heat:

Convection heaters – widely used and popular, they quickly add heat to the air when switched on and can be wall mounted or free standing and thermostatically controlled.

Electric radiators – like a central heating radiator, these can be plugged into the mains and some are free standing so can be moved around. As with convection heaters, they can be thermostatically controlled and oil filled versions are available; the oil heats up and stays warm for a while after the heater is switched off.

Radiators may be a good choice in dusty environments as there’s no exposed heating element.

Fan heaters – provide instant heat but are noisy and will blow dust about if this is present.

Bottled gas – provide instant heat and are a solution if there’s no mains power, but the hassle of changing bottles and going back and forth to return empties and buy more gas can become a hindrance.

Some gas heaters are fed from a bottle mounted outside while others are portable heaters with the gas bottle enclosed. Adequate ventilation is important to prevent the build up of fumes and to stop water vapour forming.

There are also a number of basic, ‘non heater’ ways to keep warm which can help during the course of the day.

Flexible tube heaters

Tube heaters may be all you need to keep your office warm enough depending on the prevailing temperature, but if not it’s easy enough to add some ‘top up’ heat through the methods described above if needs be.

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