Thermal Reflector Behind Radiator - does it work?

[Missing Lincs]

As title, really - are those reflective foils worth installing, or are the 'real world' benefits minimal?

Our house is old, with solid 9" brick walls (and no internal or external wall insulation).

Cheers

 

[motorbiking]

potentially but really only to reflect the heat in to the room away from the poorly insulating walls. It won't make any difference to heating bills etc as it's got no real insulating properties.

 

[Madrab]

Radiators are badly named, they only radiate 10% and convect 90% of their heat, so you wouldn't really be saving huge amounts, is it worth the effort??

 

[Missing Lincs]

is it worth the effort??

I think I now know the answer to that

Thanks for the help, chaps.

 

[WabbitPoo]

What about those radiator fans you can get, that effectively blow the warm air. Do they do anything useful? eg help with currents of warm air.

 

[Madrab]

Guess it would heat the space more effectively as it turns the rad into a bit of a fan assisted convection heater, not sure about the gain in comfort against the loss to power the fan though as it isn't increasing the radiator output rating/efficiency at all.

 

[motorbiking]

the best option with a 9" wall is to strip the plaster back to brick and fit a 50mm bonded insulating plasterboard e.g. celotex pl4050. This will improve the walls heat loss by a factor of 3-4

 

[Agile]

Generally what they sell to fit behind rads is a rather expensive gimmick. The benefit is minimal but still perhaps 2-3% on an outside solid wall so as a DIY probably worth doing if you don't remove the rad from the wall.

Cooking foil is almost as good but there is a substrate sold for putting under laminate floors with an ali foil on one side and about 3 mm of plastic insulating foam. That would be the best solution and probably very similar to what they sell for rads but much cheaper. Except you might have to buy a long roll.

Tony