Heating of a winter garden

Heating of a winter garden

The arrangement of a winter garden needs a pretty thorough preparation, but it is definitely worth it. An island of nature like this in your house will please you with its bloom the whole year. Usually, winter gardens are made in the room that is lit up by natural lighting but this effect can be achieved only in the glass constructions or in the rooms with big windows. You don’t need a private house to make your own little green island since this garden can be arranged in the spacious flat at the balcony or loggia, or, as it's popular in the western countries, on the roof. But it's highly important to take care of the heating of your winter garden. While choosing the system of the heating there are certain factors that must be taken into consideration:

• location: a part of the living accommodation, an outbuilding or a separate construction;
• area of the glass walls;
• arranging of the microclimate for the plants.

Heating of a winter garden is necessary during the cold seasons when plants don't get enough warmth from the sun beams and the glass construction is not able to keep the warm air inside. In order to secure the walls from the icing and evaporation, we need to make a thermal “cocoon” around the construction. In other words, to arrange a winter garden you have to isolate the cold air and to prevent its possible pervasion into the heated room. Moreover, such a specific object needs a flexible system of heating more than anything else, since plants differ in the level of difficulty to sustain them, and some exotic kinds need a special microclimate. Thereby, heating of a winter garden has to be effective, modern and safe. Let's consider the systems that meet these criteria best.

Taking the particular qualities of this object into consideration, we can cross out the oil heaters (heats irregularly and desiccates the air), radiators (ponderous and not practical in the glass construction), gas and solid boilers (arrangement of the boiling room, purchase of the equipment and the pipeline system can be extremely expensive). What is left is the electrical heating of a winter garden - as a satisfactory correlation of the comfort while installing and using with the price and safety. But not all the kinds of the electrical heating are able to provide everything that is required to create the proper temperature. Electrical heaters, that serve for the formation of the water heating system, also require some time for the installing, creating of the pipeline system, and there is a risk of freezing (leakage) of the water in the pipes during the winter times. Arrangement of a winter garden and the heating of it with the help of the electric convectors is possible at the small area, but it is not very good for plants - convectors heat the air, passing it through itself, which leads to the exsiccation, the decrease of the humidity and the circulation of the dust in the room. 

Ceiling IR heaters for the heating of a winter garden

It is worth paying attention to the modern systems of radiant heating, which don't have inconveniences that have been mentioned above. The warmth, that is radiated by the IR source, does not only resemble the warmth of the Sun - the nature of it is also similar to the nature of the Sun since the IR rays is a big part of the spectrum of the sun rays. These rays can easily go through the objects and the objects can absorb the warmth.

So, radiant heating of a winter garden will provide qualitative warming-up of each plant even during the coldest days. Experts point out that in order to isolate the cold air you may use different kinds of the radiant heating and combination of these kinds can only improve the effect of it. The most popular system is the system “the warm floor” and the IR heaters for a winter garden. The warm floor can be laid under any surface since the materials used for making the IR film, where the cable is put, easily let warmth go through it and are fireproof. However, the system “the warm floor” has been made to rather provide the comfort for the person than warm up all the air masses inside the room. That is why it is important to take care of the other sources of warmth. The IR heaters of a winter garden can be used as a tool to isolate the cold air by fixing them along the perimeter of the construction. If you don't have the opportunity to pave the warm floor, you can use infrared plinth that is fixed closer to the floor and provides the thermal regime that is required.

The IR system of the heating can be adjusted to any regime: periods of blooming of the flowers or when people are inside. The IR heaters for a winter garden are controlled by the thermostats that are able to switch on and switch off the system at the set time and also heat the room up to the set temperature. This way, you will be able to create a microclimate with the warmth that is natural for the plants and, moreover, you will get an energy saving electric heating because when the room is heated enough, the IR heaters turn off automatically and don't waste electricity.