Bathroom heating

[Henrietta]

Can anyone suggest any good ideas for heating Dad's bathroom. I use this term loosely as it is a brick lean too which has been re roofed and insulation in the roof. It is no more than a toilet and wash basin with grab rails on all 3 free walls and enough space inside to Manoeuvre with a zimmer frame.
At the moment there is an electric wall blower heater with a pull cord but Dad yanks it and has broken a plastic switch which the chord operates. He would be likely to do this again if I replaced it. It seems this is the only variety of bathroom heater currently available. Have considered heated electric towel rail to take the ice out of the room in the middle of winter but really inadequate and cumbersome with such limited space and will also be too low down so anyone grabbing it could get burnt.
There is no gas supply and power supply through wall to external switch really limits any heater to one short wall or above basin up high.
Suggestions very welcome!. I could write an encyclopedia on my heater sagas but this is the latest challenge.

[bowlingbun]

I have one of the "over the door" heaters in my en suite, it heats the room so quickly. So I'd stick with that basic idea, but get an electrician to fit it with an automatic sensor, so that when dad walks in, it comes on automatically. Alternatively, an electrician should be able to fit an on/off wall switch working in connection with the heater.
Alternatively, I'd get a very small towel heater, about 18" wide, 2 ft high, mine is at above worktop height, which is fine for me as I'm tall. This could be fitted with an electric timer switch, so you could leave it on all night.
I know that it used to be possible to get a combined heater and light - not sure if these are still available. Just looked on ebay, they are £39. Search for combined bathroom heat and light.


Unfortunately, there are strict regulations about bathroom heating appliances, which limits the choice somewhat.

[Henrietta]

Hi BB
Thanks very much for the suggestions. I like the sound of your senso that detects movement and turns it on , but I could not place it above the doorway as this is a wall onto an passageway with no electric supply. Would this work if it were placed opposite the doorway above a wash basin?
The towel rail sounds a good idea but there is really only one wall that it could be fitted to and would be in the way when walking through the door and too low down so would probably get grabbed out of habit as there is a grab rail there now.
- my electrician is looking into some prices and types available but he seemed to think they were too bulky for the space.
I will look at the combined heater/light. Thanks again for suggestions.
The electrician has already got a separate power switch outside the bathroom and said he could set the heater so it just worked from the external switch but it would mean leaving it on all the time as dad couldn't manage the switch. He said you have to isolate the switch outside the bathroom- so it has been on the one available internal house wall.

[bowlingbun]

If you have a power supply to the heater, then it should be possible for that to be used to "feed" the switch. So the power would first go to the switch and then into the heater. When we changed our outside loo around we didn't want to have a surface cable from switch to light, so just had a light with sensor instead. Electrician is a friend of my son's, a fellow Land Rover nut!! He likes coming here to do jobs (and talk Land Rovers) so is very obliging.

[susieq]

Hi Henrietta

I've got a heated towel rail and can tell you that they useless at heating the bathroom ! Although my flat has gas central heating when the original owners had it put in they didn't/wouldn't go to the expense of installing a radiator in the bathroom - the layout of the other rooms means that the flow of the radiator plumbing goes along one side of the flat but not the other and with concrete floors it's not possible to retro fit one without a major upheaval !

I'm currently looking into other forms of heating and am about to ask my 'tame' electrician to try and source a panel heater that would be suitable for a bathroom and could be fitted in the space occupied by the towel rail (then I'd just put an ordinary towel rail on the wall above the new heater). My only other option is a wall mounted fan heater

You can still get a light/heater unit suitable for bathrooms (light pull cord by door with heater pull cord coming from light fitting) but it depends on how far the light fitting is from any shower fitting - I'd like one of those but it's not suitable for my bathroom as the shower head is too close to the light fitting.

[lonewolf]

One of my son's carers has told me about infrared heaters which heat the person not the room and needn't take up much space, she has one that is a curtain. Apparently it is not hot to the touch and is very cheap to run. I tried to attach a link to one on Amazon, but failed - sorry.