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/

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.

Avoid School Closures: Prepare Schools for the Winter Now

The summer holiday is a time for students and teachers to relax but if you are responsible for managing the school then it can actually be the busiest part of the year.

It is important to get the school completely prepared for when the new term begins and the whole academic year starts again. You might need to complete safety checks, test security systems, and complete jobs that cannot be completed during term time. Amongst other things, you might want to think about what heating and freeze protection systems you have in place.

Although the summer has only just begun, you should prepare your building for the winter months in advance to avoid the hassle of having to close your school due to safety, and parents becoming annoyed by the costs ensued from childcare.

At Cross Electrical we specialise in trace heating systems which are designed to prevent pipes from becoming frozen during the winter by reducing the amount of heat that they lose via their surface. Electrical trace heating is a method of raising the temperatures of pipes in a freezing climate so that water inside them does not freeze.

It is a safe and maintenance-free system; once it has been put in place you no longer need to worry about pipes freezing during the winter.

In addition to preventing pipes from freezing, trace heating can also be used to maintain a constant temperature in hot water systems. It is particularly useful for containing substances that would otherwise solidify in ambient temperatures.

A thermostat is usually used to boost heat if a substance within a pipe falls below or rises above certain temperatures, these temperatures are referred to as the “setpoints”.

Heat tracing cables can be situated on the roof of a building or in the gutters during the winter to melt any ice that builds up there. When tracing cables are put into gutters it does not mean that no ice occurs in the gutter at all. Instead the aim is to provide a path for melted water to fall from the roof and down the piping.

Combining trace heating with the right thermal insulation creates a balance whereby the heat output from the trace heating matches the heat loss from the pipe so that a perfect, consistent temperature is maintained.

This type of piping is used in many industrial applications such as oil refineries or food factories where a certain material solidifies below 50◦C for example, which is much hotter than the surrounding air. The pipeline must have additional external heating to prevent the pipe and what it is carrying from cooling down – which is where trace heating comes in.

Essentially trace heating is a cost-efficient, reliable method of preventing ice from harming a building. If you would like to find out more about the trace heating systems and other methods of protecting your building from extreme weather condition, contact us on 01159 375 121 or make an enquiry via our website.