Electric Heating
Radiant and infrared heating for buildings that have never been warm and cheap at the same time
The Lake Electrical team installs commercial electric heating in buildings that are hard and expensive to heat. Radiant heaters warm a sports hall from the ceiling, and heated pews warm the person the way a car seat does, rather than the whole church. It goes in quickly, and in the right building it is the efficient answer.
NICEIC approved contractor. SafeContractor accredited. DBS-checked engineers. Trading since 2008.
Commercial electric heating across East Sussex, Kent, Surrey and the South East
We are an electrical contractor based in Battle in East Sussex. We fit radiant and infrared heating in sports halls, high open buildings and workshops, and pew heating in churches, for schools and academies, universities, offices and commercial property and industrial sites, alongside our commercial electrical installations work and the rest of our services. Radiant heating is the correct answer in some buildings and the wrong one in others, and we tell you which yours is at the visit. [[CONFIRM: which heating products and manufacturers you fit, and whether any may be named]]
Heating the air in a building that cannot hold it
The failure everyone recognises is a system warming air the building cannot hold. A church runs the boiler from Friday afternoon so the nave is bearable for two hours on Sunday, and most of that heat sits up in the roof or goes out through single glazed windows. The bill arrives, nobody on the PCC can defend it, and the congregation is still in coats. A sports hall has a system that takes half a morning to make any difference, so it goes on late, is switched off before it has done anything, and the fixture is played cold.
Radiant and infrared heat works the way sunshine through a window works on a cold day. It crosses the room and warms what it meets, the floor, the seating, the wood and the people, rather than the air on the way. Radiant heaters warm a sports hall from the ceiling, aiming the heat down onto the court.
Heated pews warm the person the way a car seat does. You feel it in the first half minute after you sit down, in the part of you that is actually cold, and the church around you is never asked to come up to temperature at all. It is warm within minutes of switching on, and when the building is empty the heating is off and nothing is being spent on it. [[CONFIRM: whether you want to state running cost comparisons or typical savings for electric radiant heating, and against what baseline]]
What it feels like in the building
A nine o’clock service where the heating went on twenty minutes earlier and the congregation is warm in the pew. A Saturday fixture in a sports hall that is usable without heating the hall all day Friday. A parish hall the churchwardens can let out again in winter, because the cost of an evening booking is predictable enough to go on the hire form.
What an electric heating installation with us includes
Heated pews and heating a listed church
Heating in a listed church goes through the faculty and the diocese, and lead times are longer than anywhere else we work, so the useful conversation happens well before the PCC has fixed a date. We work alongside the church architect, and we design the installation to be sympathetic and reversible, with fixings and cable routes chosen so the work can come out again and leave the fabric as it was. Heated pews suit that, since the heating goes into the seating rather than the structure. The rest of our work for churches and houses of worship goes the same route.
Accredited and experienced in commercial buildings
NICEIC approved contractor, SafeContractor accredited, and every engineer DBS-checked. Much of our heating work follows testing or lighting work we came in to do first, in churches, schools, sports halls, universities and offices across the South East.
Recent work
What clients say
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Why clients choose the Lake Electrical team
Trading since 2008, family run and owner led. The owners run the jobs themselves, so the person who looked at your hall is the one who priced it and the one answerable for it. Call in working hours and you get a person in the office, not a voicemail. Our engineers have all been with us at least two years, and the audio visual side is handled by our sister company, OBAV.
We are not the cheapest, and we are straight about that. The wrong heating in the wrong building is expensive twice over, so we would rather say that at the visit than after.
Electric heating questions answered
Is electric heating expensive to run
It depends on the building and how it is used, and anyone answering that without seeing the room is guessing. Radiant heating is efficient where it warms people and surfaces in a room used in bursts, since it heats within minutes and costs nothing while it is off. In a building that has to hold one temperature all day it is a poor fit.
Will it suit a listed church
Often it does, and heated pews are the reason. The heating sits in the seating rather than the structure, so usually there is no excavation and no pipework through historic fabric, and the installation can be reversed. It still goes through the faculty and the diocese, so allow more time than for a school.
Can our existing electrical supply take it
Sometimes yes, sometimes not, and it is one of the first things we check. The answer depends on your incoming supply, your main board and what is already on it. If the capacity is not there, what is needed and what it costs go in the same quote, which is where our power distribution work comes in.
How much does electric heating cost, and does a visit come first
The visit comes first, always. The cost depends on the size of the room, the number of heaters or pews, the controls and what your supply needs, so we price it after a look rather than guessing on the phone. You get one price for the installation, with anything separate listed on its own.
Can you heat a whole building or only parts of it
Both, and parts of it is often the better idea. Radiant heating suits treating a building as separate areas, so the nave is heated for a service while the vestry and the hall are not. The zoning is designed around who uses what and when, which is where the saving in a large building comes from.
Request a quote for your heating
If you have a building nobody has managed to heat at a cost you can defend, the next step is a visit. A few details is enough for us to come back with a price, usually the same day.
Struggling to heat a building. Request a quote. Prefer a chat first? Get in touch, or call [[NAP: phone number]], Mon to Fri, 8am to 5pm.
We work across East Sussex, Kent, Surrey, West Sussex and the wider South East, with commercial projects reaching sites such as Chichester.