How to Heat your Factory Efficiently

The way you heat your factory can be detrimental to the success of your operations. Your productivity and work efficiency can often align with the efficiency of your factory’s heating systems. You want to hit the correct balance of keeping your employees happy with efficient factory heating, without wasting money on excessive heating bills.

Importance of temperature in the workplace

Employee productivity can be hugely affected by the temperature of the work environment. No one is going to be able to work at an optimum level if it’s during cold months and they’re shivering.

29% of workers reported spending between ten and thirty minutes each day not working due to workplace temperature. This shows that your heating decisions should take into account your employees working environment and experience.

A balance between efficiency and effectiveness

While it is ideal to keep all your employees happy, you also want to ensure your factory’s heating is cost-effective. The sheer size of factories make them more complicated when it comes to heating. There is a large, often open-plan, space to attempt to maintain at an optimum temperature, without throwing away unnecessary amounts of expense.

A big part of this is ensuring you are avoiding waste wherever possible. Adding time controls to your factory heating system can be beneficial for this purpose. You are able to set the heating to come on a little before the work day begins so it is a nice temperature when employees arrive. You can then plan for it to turn off a little before the work day ends and be certain you are not paying for any heating whilst the factory is empty.

When it comes to the price of your heating bills, you can make sure you are being efficient by shopping around different companies. If your current supplier is charging you more than you can find elsewhere, see if they will price match.

Different heating types

Your most efficient heating method will vary depending on the individual circumstances of the factory. There is the option of both warm air and radiant heating, both suitable for different environments.

Warm air heating is the most common method and works by actively delivering warm air into a building. It can be efficient as one heater is able to heat a large area. It constantly sends warm air into a factory and in the cold months can be left on for extended periods of time to keep a space heated.

A downside to the warm air method is that the hot air will rise. This means the benefits are reduced as constant new warm air will be necessary to maintain the heating effect.

Arguably more efficient is radiant heating. Rather than pushing warm air into an open space, radiant heating works by heating up objects, structures, or people that are near it. It can be ideal in that it works instantaneously, and can be switched on or off for short bursts to have effect.

Because it is more of a close proximity heating method, you will likely need more radiant tubes to be installed around the building rather than the single warm air heater. This method can be ideal if your factory contains a lot of separate aisles and cut off areas. With the warm air method, warm air could struggle to be effective throughout all the different spaces, whereas radiant heat can specifically target all areas.

If you are looking for new heating systems for your factory, get in touch with us at Winrow Industrial Heating. Feel free to call us on 08000 588 035.