Heating and Ventilation

Vent-Axia has been named as a ‘UK Business Hero’ by the British Chamber of Commerce as part of the Chamber’s campaign to recognise the incredible work UK businesses are undertaking, in the most challenging of years. Nominated by Sussex Chamber of Commerce, the leading British ventilation manufacturer was awarded this prestigious accolade for its valuable work supplying ventilation to COVID-19 hospital wards and field hospitals in unprecedented timescales, throughout lockdown and beyond. The Crawley-based company is delighted to be one of only 399 UK businesses to be given this national recognition.

Electric heating is continually becoming an increasingly viable option for heating properties in the UK. New Government legislation heralds a change in how SAP determines a properties ERP Rating – to almost the same as gas. This change allows widespread use of electric radiators and electric boilers, which are widely understood as having low installation costs, no flue requirement, low maintenance, rapid heat up times and high efficiency. This modern method of heating is shaping up to be the future of home heating within the UK.

Improving air-tightness has to be one of the first measures to do and then all controls and boilers will work more efficiently rather than heating the streets, saving you money and reducing your carbon foot print!

John Bradley, Managing Director at Homevent, (Elta Fans residential division), discusses why this winter could see a rise in condensation – providing the perfect breeding ground for mould and reducing indoor air quality.

Just when you think 2020 couldn’t get any worse, we start to enter condensation season. Unfortunately, this year there are a number of new factors at play which could exacerbate issues further.  Let’s take a look in more detail.

At last, there is significant interest being shown in the UK in the possibility of using heat pumps to meet the requirements for renewable heat in homes up and down the country. Heat pumps have made huge strides across the rest of Europe, in Scandinavia and Canada - which have far more testing climates than we have here in the UK.
Ground source heat pumps do require significant disruption to install and either a lot of land or an expensive drilling operation to get down into the ground, but air source heat pumps come with no such issues. There are a number of very advanced heat pump products readily available here in the UK now – like LG’s Therma V series - and sales have increased significantly, but they are still very much lower than in comparable European countries – such as Germany or Denmark.

To help people understand the full benefits of air source heat pumps, Mitsubishi Electric have created a series of podcasts all about renewable heating with Ecodan Ambassador, architect and TV Presenter, George Clarke and in one of the latest, they look specifically at the social housing sector.

Titon has introduced the new FireSafe™ Air Brick – a non-combustible compact inlet/outlet grille suitable for new and refurbished houses and apartments. Designed with architects, mechanical engineers, contractors and local authorities in mind, the product is an upgrade of Titon’s (plastic) Q Plus High Flow Brick and can easily be built into external walls during construction.