Heating Your Home, The Efficient Way
Heating your home in Lanzarote has not really been an issue in the past. However,
recent winters have been getting colder and heating in homes is now a requirement for many
people. So what is the best way to do it?
The Energy Efficient Route
The most efficient way to heat your home is install a system which utilizes free or wasted
energy sources. The Altherma system produce by Daikin is one such example of doing it. Not
only will this system heat your home, but your domestic hot water too. The Altherma has the
option to integrate with solar panels to heat a domestic hot water tank. A simple enabling
kit connected to the Altherma system can automatically switch from heat pump to the solar
panel when there is sufficient heat available to heat the water tank. This means not only
will sustainable free energy come from the air, via the Altherma heat pump, but also from
the sun via the solar panel. Over 75% of the heat from the Altherma is free. It also has
the added bonus that it can cool too. It will even use the heat taken from the rooms during
cooling, to heat the domestic water. The heat pump unit is similar to heat pumps used in
the swimming pool industry, but are much efficient. Without using the solar panels, the
Altherma system would cost 123€ a year to heat the average 3 bedroom home.
The All Year Round Solution
Air conditioning has been used for years in Lanzarote, but the use is usually for cooling.
Now most models of air conditioning systems come with an heating option as standard. They
are another efficient way to heat your home, using low temperature energy from the air and
converting it to a usable heat to warm rooms. Like many things, there are good and bad
systems out there. Air conditioning technology has got so advanced that even the relatively
inefficient systems now have an energy efficiency rating (EER) of A. There is a difference
though. An unbranded "A rating" air conditioning system will heat the average home for 186€
per year. Top brand system "A energy rating" will heat the average home for 143€ per year.
Then there is the additional cost to maintain the system, life expectancy of the system and
repair costs to consider. A "cheap" unbranded system will have a greater chance of
developing a fault and a lower life expectancy, so has a likely possibility that it will in
fact have a much greater chance of costing more over the long term than a top branded model.
The Cheap Way?
The easiest way to heat your home is by using either an electric fan heater or oil
filled radiator. They are light and portable and relatively cheap to buy. Electric heaters
give instant heat. Oil filled radiators take a while to warm up, but once they have warmed
up, they will maintain the temperature using the warm oil to heat. They are only consuming
power while heating the oil, so they are more efficient than electric heaters. However,
they both fall when it comes to running costs. They will consume more or less the same
amount of electrical power as amount of heat given out, so they are not very efficient
compared to the other options. Typical running costs for these types of heater are around
500€ a year, to produce the same amount of heat as the other types of systems for the same
time.
