Our top tips for saving money on heating this winter!

We hate to face up to it, but the fact is, winter is here! The clocks have gone back, Halloween has been and gone, and the temperatures are starting to drop lower and lower.

As you know, here at Cross Electrical we offer Thermal Insulation, Electrical Trace Heating, Frost Protection and Temperature Maintenance services to businesses and individuals up and down the country. We also supply underfloor heating services – which is one fantastic way to chop your energy bills in half for the winter!

The GREEN ELECTRIC MAT From Hemstedt with unilateral connection and i-sleeve (see more here) is the floor heating mat that provides economically efficient heating. Underfloor heating is also a luxury in the winter months, creating an ambient temperature and a pleasant warm floor underfoot. A luxury that saves you money and helps the environment – for us it’s a no brainer!

But what else can you do to save on your bills this winter...?

Put on a jumper!

Okay, this may sound silly, but it’s true! Most families have the heating on at 20 degrees centigrade all day, and wander about the house comfortably in a T-shirt. By turning down your thermostat by just one degree, to 19 degrees, you can shave £60 a year from your bill! If you feel cold just wear a few more layers, but you will barely notice the difference if your house is well insulated!

Be clever!

You can make sure that the central heating and hot water is off when you’re out for the day - whether that’s at work, school or visiting friends and family! By using your timer carefully and cleverly, so it comes on only when absolutely necessary, you can save a lot of money!

Turn off the radiators in rooms you don’t use, like a guest bedroom for example, and keep windows and doors closed if the heating is turned on.

Go old school

As well as wrapping up, why not buy a hot water bottle! These days you can pick one up for less than £4 and they can really help to keep you warm, especially in bed at night! As well as this, stock up on fleecy blankets and throws to keep you warm! You can buy lovely soft throws on the high street or in supermarkets for a fiver – which will save you a lot of money if it means turning your thermostat a bit more!

Be careful with your lights

Lighting accounts for 19% of the average household’s electricity bill. One no brainer is switching to energy-saving bulbs – which can knock over £55 a year off your bills!

Cut out your bad habits when it comes to having your lights on! Be vigilant in turning off lights when you’re going out, or if you’re not in a room.  Unplug appliances that have a light on when inactive. That includes the TV, DVD player and even your mobile phone charger.

Keep your heat in!

Don’t let heat you’re paying for slip out! Make sure that you draw the curtains or blinds at night and use draught-blockers for doors to maintain as much keep as possible!

These are but a few on the many tips that float around when it comes to keeping your and your home warm without facing huge winter energy bills! Do you have any other tips or tricks up your sleeves? We’d love to hear them so drop us a comment below or contact us on FB or Twitter!

What’s so great about our XEL-W Hot Water Pipework system

We promote our modern solution, the XEL-W, because it offers an effective, energy efficient solution for hot water pipe work within re-circulation systems. With global warming being such a widely talked about issue, and everyone becoming more and more aware of their carbon footprint, energy efficiency is an important part of the building and construction industry.

In fact, UK building regulations require all engineers, architects and builders to ensure that they work hard to reduce energy use in the areas in which they work, and they must to utilise renewable sources of energy.

That is where our  XEL-W hot water pipework comes in. Just one area in which those working in these types of industry can make an impact on this reduction in the energy use of a whole building, our hot water pipework is extremely efficient.

Standard methods of hot water distribution in a building, often referred to as ‘flow and return’, don’t necessarily work with in commercial use.

This is because the system is not energy efficient for commercial and industry use and can often lead to significant heat losses and subsequently money losses.

Our aim is to ensure your industry is utilising the correct temperature maintenance when building or constructing homes and buildings to enable the best cost-effectiveness for yourself and your clients in addition to using energy efficiently. 

XEL-W  offers an effective solution for hot water pipe work within re-circulation systems. This piece of equipment can have a significant impact on energy efficiency. By combining hot water comfort with economical methods, the self-regulating heating cable fitted can compensate for the heat loss of water in the pipe while ensuring that hot water is delivered at the desired temperature the whole way through to the hot water system.

It’s the perfect solution for hot water temperature maintenance of pipes in:

•  Family homes
•  Industry buildings
•  Hospitals
•  Sports centres
•  Houses and flats

By providing hot water from every tap outlet it eliminates the necessity for return pipe work and reduces energy consumption. What’s even better is that it is very easy to install and no maintenance is required. 

With 50% less pipe work than normal hot water pipe work systems the XEL-W has been specifically designed for such application and can even be fitted to existing systems preventing the running of gallons of cold water in order to get to the hot water.

What is Trace Heating?

With this month’s blog we are going back to basics, explaining exactly what Trace Heating is and what it is used for. As we are specialists in Trace Heating systems, we automatically assume that everyone knows exactly what it is and how is works, which is obviously not the case. So what is Trace Heating? Read on to find out...

What is Trace Heating?

Trace heating, known as Electric heat tracing, heat tape or surface heating, is a system used to maintain or raise the temperature of pipes and vessels. Trace heating takes the form of an electrical heating element run in physical contact along the length of a pipe. The pipe must then be covered with thermal insulation to retain heat losses from the pipe. Heat generated by the element then maintains the temperature of the pipe. Trace heating is used for many applications from protecting pipes from freezing, to maintaining a constant flow temperature in hot water systems, or to maintain process temperatures for piping that must transport substances that solidify at ambient temperatures.

When did Trace Heating come about?

Electric trace heating began in the 1930s but to begin with no dedicated equipment was available. Mineral insulated cables were run at high current densities to produce heat, and control equipment was adapted from other applications. Mineral-insulated resistance heating cables were introduced in the 1950s, and then parallel-type heating cables that could be cut to length in the field became available. Self-limiting thermoplastic cables were marketed in 1971.

So what is Trace Heating used for?

The most widespread pipe trace heating applications include:

Temperature maintenance

Road & Ramp Outdoor Surface Heating

Anti-condensation

Gulley and roof snow / ice protection

Frost protection and freeze prevention

Door / frame interface ice protection

Window de-misting

Pond freeze protection

Soil warming

Anti-cavitation purpose

Here at Cross Electrical, we’ve been controlling the temperature for industries for over 40 years, so why compromise? Call us today on -01159722050

Heating throughout history

Fire had been the original and obvious source for home heating for throughout history and until recent times was the only source for home heating. With this being said, the manner in fire has been used for heating has changed greatly.

In the Skara Brae site in Orkney, Scotland (3180 BCE-2500 BCE) the homes contained a square hearth in the center for both eating and cooking. This standard heating unit with a hearth in the center of the room and a smoke hole overhead, continued in some parts of the world up until the Middle Ages, but in the Roman world great improvements were made. The upper class Roman had a hypocaust heating system. In this system, the floor was raised several feet off the ground on tile pillars, and fires were then built underneath the floors, becoming the first known case of radiant heating.[i]

The fireplace as we know it today first came around in the 1200’s. During these times they were likely to smoke up a room due to the lack of chimneys. This impracticality meant that fireplaces themselves were often built more for aesthetic reasons over practical uses.

The radiator was obviously a huge improvement in heating a room when it was invented in 1855. Hot water or steam was used to heat individual rooms, but with simplistic thermostats often meant it was difficult to get the temperature right where it was wanted. There have been stories from the 1800’s of people having to open the windows in winter when a room have overheated.

The furnace was introduced in the late Victorian period, where a central unit could heat an entire building. By the middle of the 20th century, Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning systems had been introduced throughout the western world.

Cross Electrical (Nottingham) Ltd specialises in the design, manufacture, supply and install electrical trace heating systems incorporating a thermal insulation division. Our fully qualified service and installation engineers provide both a national and international coverage for all types of application within industry and commerce.

HERE AT CROSSELECTRICAL WE ARE THE CONTROLLERS OF TEMPERATURE!

Call us today on - +44 (0)115 937 5121

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[i] http://timourrashed.com/ancient-methods-heating-home/

The history of underfloor heating

Did you know that underfloor heating is far from a new concept? It has actually been dated back as far as the Neolithic period and has been used throughout history as a main form of heating. The type of underfloor heating we offer to you today is a far cry from some of the methods used in the past.  We’ve compiled a concise history of some of the inventive systems used by our ancestors to heat their homes.

The earliest forms of heated flooring have been dated back to as early as 5,000 BC. Archaeologists have found evidence that shows the use of ‘baked flooring’ dating back to this time. Found in China, these methods heated floors by drafting hot smoke from fires through trenches cut into the floors.
There is evidence that the Romans were using underfloor heating systems on a larger scale by around 500 BC. Their homes were constructed with voids in the floors and walls through which air, warmed by an open fire, could pass through to heat the structure. These systems were often used in Roman baths and would heat the pools of water as well as the rooms.

In the following 500 years, similar methods of underfloor heating was widely used throughout China and Korea, but was not used significantly in Europe until much later. These days it has developed so much that it has become one of the most energy efficient forms of heating available on the market. As people are striving towards more energy efficient homes, underfloor heating is being used more and more in both commercial and residential new build properties.
The systems of today are exceptionally comfortable and controllable. They remove the need for radiators resulting in more room space and heat provided underfloor is distributed completely evenly causing is zero dust circulation.

This simple method of heating has been available from us for many years, providing a cost effective and energy efficient system for any application. We have the products and support to make your project run smoothly, offering a free quotation service and practical advice. Our electric under floor heating products can be installed in hours without the need for specialist tools or skills, the products we propose are low profile and won't raise floor levels.   Call us today for more information!

Hot water temperature maintenance

Static water in any hot water system over time will cool and during the winter months the prospect of it freezing is even more likely.

This can cause an inconvenience in any industry, as in order to get running water or an adequate temperature of water, cold water has to be run out of the system before hot water will reach its output or tap.

As a result water bills and energy bills can increase with higher levels of water wastage and more energy being consumed in order to heat the water. Time is also exhausted by the user spending time unproductively controlling water temperature.

A simple, efficient and cost effective way of combating this problem is to use trace heating solutions to ensure that water is kept a consistently regulated temperature and hot inside hot water pipe work and at a temperature tailored to suit your requirements.

This also ensures that a circulating system isn’t needed in order to provide hot water.

At Cross Electrical we can supply both trace heating and thermal insulation for hot water pipe work for adequate temperature maintenance solutions not only over the winter months but throughout the entire year so that a thermal balance is created where the heat output from trace heating correctly matches heat lost from the pipe.

If you are looking for more industry specific trace heating solutions for the chemical industry, oil refineries, power plants or food factories then we can also design, manufacture and supply to suit such requirements using your regulatory temperature as a limit and carefully matching one of our solutions.

We are also finding a greater increase in the use of trace heating in laboratories for researchers working in the materials field and need trace heating for use isotropically in combination with other objects with thermodynamic properties.

You will find some ready assembled trace heating for water pipe kits with preset and predetermined temperature and limit controls throughout our website.

Please take the time to browse our brochure and should you not be able to find what you are looking for or a specific answer to your question then please don’t hesitate to contact the team at Cross Electrical.