Bathroom Heat? I need a little boost.

[rec head]

We are planning on gutting and rehabbing our bathroom. My wife really wants radiant floor heat because the tile is cold in the morning and I really like it HOT when I take a shower. Our place is just an old apartment retrofitted with forced air HVAC and although the walls are drafty heating and cooling isn't a big deal. We just want something extra for the bathroom. I have looked at some of the popular options like radiant floor, towel rack heater, and heat lamps. The radiant floor would definitely please my wife but I don't think that it would help much with getting the room HOT while I shower. Anyone using any of these options? Any recommendations?

[BSUdude]

Does you bathroom have any outside walls or is it all interior?

[j44ke]

I got two Stiebel Eltron heaters for our bathrooms. Our building is old (1903) and our bathrooms are built where the original bathroom for the workshop that was in our building was. That means behind the wall of our 2008 bathrooms is a 1903 window. All the ducts from the bathrooms and the kitchen vent out through this window into an air shaft. Why they didn't brick up the window and put in a better vent system, I don't know but we'll do that when we renovate. Anyway, it creates a cold wall in both bathrooms that can really chill each room when it is cold outside. So I did some looking around and found these Stiebel Eltrons. Usually they are installed towards the ceiling, but looking at them, I figured they'd work near the floor with a little trim piece across the top to cover the electrical connection. Perfect. Crank them up and you can bake bread. Very quick heating. And they seem really energy efficient, plus you can use the timer to run them for a while and then shut off.

[rec head]

Outside wall with a new window.

j44ke - those look nice and don't seem too expensive. Do you know which one you got? How loud is it?

[NYCfixie]

We are planning on gutting and rehabbing our bathroom. My wife really wants radiant floor heat because the tile is cold in the morning and I really like it HOT when I take a shower. Our place is just an old apartment retrofitted with forced air HVAC and although the walls are drafty heating and cooling isn't a big deal. We just want something extra for the bathroom. I have looked at some of the popular options like radiant floor, towel rack heater, and heat lamps. The radiant floor would definitely please my wife but I don't think that it would help much with getting the room HOT while I shower. Anyone using any of these options? Any recommendations?

When we gutted an original bathroom in our 1940s NJ home, the builder stated the bathroom was too small for an electric radiant heat system under the tiles to be worthwhile and it would be too close to the wax ring for the toilet. He suggested a toe-kick heater with a thermostat which our electrician also thought was a great idea to install in the dead space under the vanity. They come in 120v or 220v.


Pictures are not from our home....but relevant anyway.

[rec head]

Thanks. I was wondering about radiant flooring in a bathroom this size. Didn't think about the wax ring.

[NYCfixie]

We had a very small, even for a home, 5ish x 8ish bathroom so by the time you factored the shower stall, vanity, and toilet there just was not that much room. Take out the floorspace directly near the toilet and the electric radiant floor blanket that goes under the tiles was not worth it.

[NYCfixie]

Don't know if you have the room but this shower/bathroom fan was recommended by many different people and our builder. I found the one with a Halogen light (now also comes with LED light) that we installed in our shower. It was great because we had the light wired to a switch and the fan to a timer.

FanTech

[j44ke]

Outside wall with a new window.

j44ke - those look nice and don't seem too expensive. Do you know which one you got? How loud is it?

I got the CKT 120, which is essentially the US model with the timer. You can get the best price on Amazon. The heaters are hard wired, so you'll need an electrician (unless you are an electrician) to install them. It would be a good idea if they were wired on their own circuit. Ours were replacements for heaters from the 1950's that looked like total fire traps. Electrician did a circuit test or two or three and installed them above "splash level" from the floor and away from hanging towels just to be safe. Like I said, I covered up the top gap between the heater and the wall so you can't see the cable going into the wall and nothing can get wedged behind it. I left gaps on either side for the air intake and it seems to be plenty.

They are not very noisy but there is a whirring hum. It isn't distracting, and once it heats the bathroom up to a certain point, it shuts off (basic thermostat on the heaters goes from 1-3.) You definitely won't hear them over the sound of a shower. In the winter, they make all the difference. Glad we put them in instead of just removing the old heaters and retiling the wall over the hole.