Choosing the Right Heated Towel Rails
There is nothing like stepping out of the shower or bath and enclosing yourself in a nice warm towel. Heated towel rails give you the benefit of warmth when you leave the bathroom, as well as enough heat to warm a room up.
There are considerations however, when you are thinking of buying a heated towel rail. Your first major consideration is the location of it. Size has a bearing on this. You will need to think about how many people are going to be using the rail to heat their towels. If you have a lot of people who are going to be utilising the equipment you will need a larger rail, or perhaps even two rails for your bathroom.
You also need to think about the source of power you will tap into. You can of course use the central heating system to power the heat through the rail. While these systems are relatively inexpensive to run, they are limited, in a sense, to being used when the weather is sufficiently cold to mean that the central heating needs to be turned on. If you want a nice hot towel in the summer, a heated towel rail that comes off the central heating system just isn’t going to work for you. In addition to this concern, you also have to think about the fact that, unless you have the correct piping in place to run this kind of system up into your bathroom, then you can either get new piping (costs the Earth) or do without.
The Electric solution, whereby you run the heated towel rail off a bar or rod that is inserted into the towel rail frame is obviously more versatile. You don’t have to be at the mercy of the seasons with this system. Instead you can turn the system on whenever you are having a bath, even if it is in the middle of our increasingly hot summers. They are more expensive than the central heating systems, but arguably worth it due to the flexibility that they bring to the towel rail experience.
You can of course go for the dual fuel option. This draws on central heating when it is on and the electricity system in your home when the central heating is not being used. This is the ultimate in flexibility, and this added convenience means the highest price range. Shop around for a good dual fuel solution, you may be pleasantly surprised. A reputable retailer will be able to provide you with a solution that is more of a bargain than a shock, if you ask them nicely.
A final consideration is the material the rail is made from. There are brass rails and steel reels. The brass option is the best, but tends to come in at a much higher price than the steel one. However, the fact that brass does not suffer from corrosion as quickly as steel does explains the difference in price.
