Infrared heating is a revolutionary, energy efficient way of providing heat, and works in a completely different way to normal convection heaters.

They can save you money off your energy bills, which is a huge aspect to consider for businesses up and down the country, where cost cutting is massively important.

As you would expect though, the general public’s awareness of how one would go about buying a set of panels is lacking. Incidentally, this is what we’re going to be looking at here, more specifically, buying infrared panels for the office.

How To Calculate The Number Of Panels Needed

Working out how much heat you need in terms of wattage for any given area is actually easier than most people imagine. You just need a tape measure, a calculator, and a little bit of information about how well insulated your office building is.

You’ll need to measure the length, width and height of your office in metres, and then multiply all these numbers together to get the volume of your office in cubic metres.

The table below then gives you the advised wattage per m³ depending on how well insulated your office is.

To get the total wattage needed, you need to multiply the volume of the room by the advised watts per cubic metre.

For more information about the process of calculating this, take a look at our guide on how to buy IR heating panels.

Let’s look at some examples, based on average office sizes from within the UK.

Example 1: A Medium Sized UK Office

The first example we’re going to look at is a medium sized office. It has a length of 20m, a width of 13m, and a height of 3m.

The volume in cubic metres works out as 780m³.

Given the building is around 50 years old, it has moderate insulation, and needs 30W of heat per cubic metre.

Multiplying 780 by 25 gives us a total power requirement of 23,400W.

The office we’re looking at has a suspended grid ceiling, so there are a couple of panels that we can use in the ceiling.

The first – and perhaps the most practical – would be the 595 x 1195mm 700W IR Panel. But how many do you need?

All you need to do is divide 23,400 (the energy requirement for the office) by 700 (the energy used by the panel). Rounding off the result, this gives us approximately 33 panels.

You could also look at our 995 x 1195mm 1200W Infrared Panel if you want less physical units, though this particular heater won’t fit into a suspended grid ceiling.

In this case, you would only need 20 panels – which may be easier to deal with than 33.

Example 2: A Smaller Sized UK Office

This time, our office is considerably smaller – it measures just 11 x 9.5 x 3m. The volume then, is 313.5 cubic metres.

It is also a brand new, state-of-the-art facility. As a result, it’s very well insulated, and only needs 25W per m³.

The total wattage requirement is 25 x 313.5, which gives us 7837.5W.

Given the relatively low wattage for a large volume, there are a lot of options open for this particular office. The first is to use 22 of our 595 x 595mm 350W Infrared Panel, and install them into the ceiling, provided it is of the suspended grid variety.

We calculated the number of panels using the same method as we did in the previous example – by dividing the total wattage required (7837.5W) by the wattage of the panel we want to use (350W).

The result is 22.4, so we’d be able to get away with 22 panels.

The 595 x 995mm 580W IR Panel Heater is also a viable option too. Its higher energy consumption means there are less panels required – just 13 or 14 needed.

Example 3: A Large Sized UK Office

The last office we’re looking at is a big one – it’s 28m in length, 18m in width, and 3m in height. This gives us a volume of 1512m³.

To complicate matters, it’s a set of very old office blocks from the beginning of the 20^th century, so it will need 35W per cubic metre to compensate for its poor insulation.

1512 multiplied by 35 gives us a total wattage of 52,920W.

Realistically, we’re looking at the more powerful end of the panel range. If we were to use our 995 x 1195mm 1200W IR Heaters, we’d have to divide 52,920W by 1200W, which gives us around 44 panels.

The other option would be to go for our 795 x 1195 900W Infrared Panels. Using the same method as above, this would give us 59 panels.

It’s Simple To Order Infrared Panels

With a few simple calculations, you can find out in a matter of minutes how many infrared heating panels you need for any sized office or cubicle. It’s worth the effort too, thanks to the energy efficiency and zero maintenance of the panels themselves.

If you have any further queries about the technology behind infrared heating, the installation, or anything else, then please get in touch. You can give us a call on 0116 321 4124, or you can send us an email to sales@suryaheating.co.uk.

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