BTU to Watt Conversion
Based on current climate zone requirements throughout North America, to efficiently heat a room, a heat loss calculation is needed to determine the amount of BTUs required to heat a space or entire area.
Based on these zone requirements, the heating systems are sized accordingly to accommodate this requirement. A 10' x 10' room with 8-foot ceilings in zone 6 requires approximated 5500btu to sufficiently heat. A 1500 watt baseboard heater will produce approximately 5115BTU for this same area. Traditonal heat systems heat the area utiliziling convection and forced air requiring immense energy at the source to be effective to heat throughout the space by circulating the heat via air.
Far infrared heating technology works completely differently.
It is a fact that 1 kW of electrical energy produces 3412 BTU’s. Our far infrared heating technology, like any other “electric heater” convert 100% of the electrical energy into heat, but how this heat is used is what sets it apart. A baseboard heater for example, also “technically” converts 100% of the electrical energy into heat, but yet it is only 25-40% efficient (60-75% are “convection losses”). Most heaters, including many baseboard heaters, use fans which use more energy to operate – this is also lost energy.
100% of electrical energy is converted to heat energy stored in thermal mass (860KCal/1KW), therefore providing virtually no energy loss as the HexHeat film is placed evenly throughout the floor of the room. Far infrared heat provides a 3 meter carrier wave that absorbes this heat energy into surrounding objects rather than heating the air which by its very nature is more energy efficient as the absorbed thermal mass of the objects also contribute to heat as they slowly radiate the heat energy back into the room.
When determining the amount of floor surface area required to maximize btu efficiency with HexHeat, it is important to note your BTU requirements will be different between forced air and radiant heat. With an average of 70% coverage on the floor, HexHeat can produce enough BTU to effectively heat this space initially and once the room is up to temperature, the required energy to maintain the temperature is reduced by nearly 35%.
1 Kw (1000watts) = 3413 BTU
Estimated BTU Requirements zone 6
This is just one example of a geographical requirement in Canada based on zone 6.
| Area to be Heated sqft |
BTU/h required | Watts | HexHeat 140w/m2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 5500 | 1611 | 1300 |
| 200 | 11000 | 3222 | 2600 |
| 300 | 16500 | 4834 | 3900 |
| 500 | 27500 | 8057 | 6500 |
As HexHeat's far infrared technology heats utilizing the properties of thermal mass, it does not require excessive energy values to heat the same area. If you require the full BTU for your project, we can supply a film 160w/m2 that would be 55btu/h, but we would not recommend this. Only for a house built pre 1980 with poor insulation values would we consider this.
In comparison, using HexHeat far infrared to heat a 2000 sqft house, our film application provides continual uniform heat for each individual room. What needs to be illustrated is this far infrared technology utilizes thermal mass. Once the room is up to temperature, the thermal mass in each room maintains and radiates this heat more consistently. ie: The floors, walls, furniture, all store the heat in the form of thermal mass. However for a quick comparison see the table below for BTU outputs of HexHeat 220V 140w/m2
| 100% Floor Coverage | 80% Floor Coverage | 70% Floor Coverage | 60% Floor Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 26012watts / 88781 BTU | 20810watts / 71025 BTU | 18209watts / 62147 BTU | 15607 watts / 53269 BTU |
As illustrated in the table, with HexHeat you can cover 70% of the floor with the heating film and effectively heat the room.
It can be difficult to directly compare the BTUs of a furnace or baseboard board heater to the HexHeat, as there are many variables to their efficiencies. For example the level of insulation in the room, how high are the ceilings, is this room south facing on the exterior, are there single or double pane windows? These variables all effect the heating efficiency of forced air and baseboard heaters and to some extent radiant floor. However with HexHeat warming the objects within the space creating "thermal mass" throughout each room, it is less affected by these variables. Far Infrared heat utilizes 100% of its energy to create heat directly where it is needed. Heat generation rate = 860KCal/1KW
Baseboard heaters, radiators and furnaces are designed to heat the air, this causes convection in the air as it moves away from the heat source, the heat dissipates quickly, causing the heating source to turn back on and replenish the heat. HexHeat's far infrared technology heats the thermal mass of surrounding objects. The up to temperature heating requires a bit more time to heat (45minutes to an hour from cold start), however once the temperature is achieved, the thermal mass energy is now radiating throughout the entire room. This creates an atmosphere that has more uniform and consistant heat. There is much less fluctuation of the temperature in the room, even when a window or door is opened. While BTU's is a standard measure of heat, types of heat are not standard, but we can use the BTU values as benchmarks for estimates.
All of these existing technologies meet the heating requirements in their own way. With HexHeat we try to provide a new solution or alternative that can be refined and targeted specifically to each room. With current trends leaning towards net-zero buildings, HexHeat provides the ability to control to each room seperately and turn it off where it is not needed thus meeting more energy efficient requirements.