Here we talk through some of the brilliant energy saving features of Onyx gas stoves and electric fires!
November 18, 2022 Dominic Kearney
We are all well-used to the idea of thermostatic heating. Just set your desired room temperature and your heat source – whether a stove, fire, or central heating boiler – will warm your home just the right amount. Once your home reaches the set temperature, the heat will turn off. This saves energy and makes sure your home never becomes uncomfortably hot. All Onyx gas and electric fires can heat thermostatically just as described. It’s also easy to set your desired room temperature with their remote handsets. Our luxury electric fires, however, also come with the added bonus of Open Window Detection.
Having your heating on and a window open is a sure-fire way to waste energy. The energy used to heat your home flies, very literally, out of the window; Open Window Detection is a fantastic feature designed to prevent such waste. The Fusion 150RW, Orbit and Avanti electric fires are able to detect sudden drops in temperature, such as those that occur when a window is left open. If they detect a drop of more than 4°C, they will switch off the heat to prevent energy being wasted on a room that is no longer well-insulated.
Coming home from a long day’s work, none of us want to walk from the brisk outdoors into an equally brisk living room. For that reason, many of us schedule our heating to come on before we would usually get home. If you get in at 6pm, perhaps you’ll schedule the heating for 5.30pm to give things a chance to warm up before you arrive.
Getting this right isn’t easy, however. Schedule the heating to come on too late and you’re walking into a cold house after work like before. Schedule it for too early and you’re wasting energy keeping your house warm while nobody is home. What makes this problem even harder to solve is that the time it takes for your house to get warm varies with the weather of the day.
Thankfully, Onyx electric fires feature an innovative solution to precisely this problem. Rather than guessing a time for your heating to come on, Avanti, Fusion and Orbit electric fires feature Adaptive Start Control. Just input the time you need the room to be warm for (the time you usually arrive home). Your Onyx fire will gauge exactly when it needs to turn the heat on. On cold days, your fire may switch on up to 45 minutes before you get home to ensure the room gets to temperature. On more temperate days, though, it will know not to start up until just minutes before you arrive. This excellent feature means that, on these warmer days, you aren’t wasting energy maintaining warmth in an empty house.
All of our premium stoves and fires have one fantastic feature in common. That is, they only spend energy heating the room you are actually using. We generally use central heating boilers to keep the whole house warm, but this often leads to energy being wasted heating unoccupied spaces. For example, why keep the dining room or kitchen warm after dinner is finished with? Why waste heat on a spare room while no guests are staying?
A good way to prevent this kind of waste is by using zonal heating appliances such as gas and electric fires to heat just one room. Do you spend most of your evening in the living room in front of your media wall? You could still enjoy relaxing warmth with your central heating switched off! Just switch on your Liv 3 gas stove or Orbit electric fire. Practicing zonal heating in this way can make a world of difference to your energy consumption, especially when the habit is combined with the additional energy saving features of Onyx products.
If you’re interested in buying an Onyx stove or fire, you can find them available exclusively at your local Onyx retailer‘s showroom.
Find your nearest showroom today using our retailer search, and see our luxury fires on display!
November 18, 2022 Dominic Kearney