ᐅ Electric Towel Warmers vs. Traditional Bathroom Radiators

Hello everyone,
I currently have a small problem in my apartment. We usually don’t heat the entire 130 m² (1400 sq ft), especially not at night, but only the rooms where we spend time.
However, this means that our towels in the unheated bathroom dry very poorly and quickly start to smell musty.

We usually shower in the evening and don’t heat the bathroom at night.

One option would be to heat the bathroom at night just to dry the towels. The towels hang about 3 m (10 ft) away from the radiator on the wall, so the room would need to be heated well for quite a while to dry the towels properly.

A second option would be to install a second radiator. However, the connection would have to be done by the landlord (or their plumbing contractor), and an energy meter from ista would need to be installed. This would involve significant additional costs.

The third option would be an electric bathroom heater that is only turned on in the evenings to dry the towels.

Option 3 actually seems like the simplest and, at first glance, potentially the most efficient solution. But I’m curious how efficient these actually are. The model would be about 1600 x 700 mm (63 x 28 inches) with 900 W. If the heater would only need to run for 10 minutes to generate enough heat to dry the towels, it could be cheaper/more efficient than heating the entire room via district heating.
But if the heater has to run for an hour or longer, consuming more than 1 kWh per day just for towel drying, it might be less attractive.

Does anyone have experience with electric heaters or maybe even advice on this specific issue?

Thanks a lot for your opinions
AleXSR700

With an infrared panel and a towel arm, towels dry very quickly. I wouldn’t expect it to take more than 20 minutes. Do you have some space in your bathroom and enjoy good design? Then take a look at Tubes Scaletta. It warms the towel, allows air circulation = good drying and doesn’t use that much energy.

From an energy perspective, drying towels with a heater is basically quite inefficient.

From an energy efficiency perspective, it is not advisable to leave rooms in an occupied apartment completely unheated at all times.

Thanks for your replies.

kbt09 schrieb:

And from an energy perspective, you shouldn’t leave rooms in an occupied apartment completely unheated all the time.

The issue is that the apartment is only “used” during the week from about 6:00 pm to 6:30 am. So it makes more sense to heat just the living and dining rooms in the evening and the bedroom at night on weekdays.
Although I haven’t been able to measure this yet, I would assume so.
The apartment never gets colder than 17°C (63°F). Around 30-50 m² (320-540 sq ft) are not used at all during the week and only rarely on weekends (office, children’s room [currently a wardrobe since no child yet], bathroom, hallway). I just can’t imagine it being more economical to keep everything at 20°C (68°F) all day than to let it cool down and heat up when needed.

But please correct me if I’m wrong! 🙂

hampshire schrieb:

With an infrared panel and towel rail, towels dry very quickly. I wouldn’t expect it to take more than 20 minutes. Do you have some space in the bathroom and enjoy good design? Then check out Tubes Scaletta. It warms the towel, allows air circulation = good drying, and doesn’t use that much energy.
From an energy standpoint, drying towels with a radiator is generally quite inefficient.

We have wall space but not floor space; ideally it would also look nice, but beyond a certain purchase price it doesn’t make sense (you can heat the bathroom for quite a while with $1000 😀).

AleXSR700 schrieb:

but beyond a certain purchase price, it no longer makes sense

An investment that brings lasting satisfaction is worthwhile. That’s my approach to design.

Regarding the radiator you mentioned (remove the link again to avoid trouble with the webmasters), it features an electrically operated heating element integrated into a heat storage system. When you turn the heating off, it stays warm for a while. However, the warm-up phase is longer. In that case, I would possibly prefer infrared heating — turns on instantly, almost instantly off — making it easier to use.

No, 20° is not necessary, but 15 to 17° should be maintained. Usually, standard radiators are set to level 1 or 2 or so. Once the desired temperature is reached, they stop heating and do not consume energy.

• * (asterisk): approx. 5°C (41°F), frost protection.
• Level 1: approx. 12°C (54°F).
• Level 2: approx. 16°C (61°F).
• Level 3: approx. 20°C (68°F).
• Level 4: approx. 24°C (75°F).
• Level 5: approx. 28°C (82°F).