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Radiator Reflectors

About this product

Product footprint: 570g CO₂e for 2,5 m2

Carbon savings rating: 4/5 🟡🟢🟢🟢🟢

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Product carbon footprint calculation

Product footprint:  570g CO₂e for 2,5 m2

CategoryCO2e in gSource / Assumptions
production processunknown
estimated 
10
The whole production consists gluing together two materials
materials:
aluminum
expanded polystyrene
adhesives
270
240

30
Source 1 – aluminum
Source 2 – EPS
Source 3 – adhesives
Transport + Disposal20Source 4
Quelle Baumarkt mit Maßen und Gewicht : Hier

Carbon savings rating details

This rating is supposed to give you an indication of how much positive impact purchasing and adding radiator reflectors to your heatings footprint. Of course the exact numbers depend on the current level of insulation, your type of heating and your habits.

There are many angles of looking at this. The way that the book is set up there are helpful tips for just about every life situation and Mike Berners-Lee is very aware that everyone is going to pick their battles in accordance with what feels okay for them.

Let’s pick some examples though to give you an idea.

Scenario 1 (our living room / home office test):

  • Our apartment was built in the 60s and is not very well insulated
  • Heating source is fossil gas (problematic, especially since Ukraine war started)
  • The radiator is below a large window on the outside wall

It’s hard to say if all of the savings compared to the prior year come from the reflectors or if doing this project has also made us more conscious with our habits or if the weather was just a bit better overall but we’ll take the 25% any day! The cool thing is that our landlord communicates the consumption monthly, so we will see a great picture after a full year. That is also financially quite a reasonable investment.

Scenario 2 (New apartment project):

  • To be honest, if you live in a house/apartment that’s rather new and built to comply with modern (European) standards, it is very likely that such a foil would do very little for you.

BUT the CO₂ savings from the foil do not only result from being able to turn down the thermostat of the radiator and requiring less energy for heating. 

If you take a few minutes to rearrange furniture if necessary so that it does not block the radiator and attach the foil to the wall, you will also be more conscious about heating in the future. You will check more often if the heating is turned off when the room temperature is comfortable or when you leave the apartment.

Conclusion: Radiator reflector foil is very likely to have a positive impact, how high depends a bit on your specifics.

Alternatives to buying new:

  • Some people have seen positive effects even with regular aluminium foil, which you might have lying around anyways.
  • Sometimes there are rest pieces from construction work, which can still be used for one radiator. 
  • Reusing could be difficult up to impossible because it could fall into pieces after removing.

Why did we choose this product?

Heating is one of the main sources of our domestic carbon footprint and this is a home improvement project that almost anyone can pursue with positive effects very short term.

installation only needs a few minutes, it is affordable and the effect in comparison is huge.

If the radiator is underneath a window in front of a bad isolated wall it will easily be 1-2 degrees celsius more inside the room after the installation. If this allows you to turn down your thermostat you will save 6% of energy for every degree. 

An energy reduction of 6-12% for 5€ and half an hour of your time everytime you are heating up your house is quite a lot.

This will save money for you and CO₂ for the environment.

Of course there are bigger projects like insulating the entire outside wall which can have even greater effects but that are out the reach of a majority of people. Also we just love that this reflector foil pays for itself financially rather quickly, especially with the current energy prices.