Getting more from a bathroom: insulation and a radiant plaster ceiling

A bathroom already produces a great deal of heat

A hot shower, a hairdryer, two people one after the other: the room takes in a considerable amount of energy over an hour. The problem is not producing more of it, it is that this heat goes straight into the cold surfaces and out through the ventilation.

What a radiant plaster ceiling does

Closed and insulated above, it recovers part of that heat instead of letting it escape, and sends it back down as infrared radiation. At that stage the system is passive: it consumes nothing, it redistributes.

The metal framework

Rails and studs make it possible to build a perfectly flat ceiling under an old substrate that is not, and to hold the air gap at a constant distance. In a damp room that framework has a second advantage: it does not move with moisture the way a timber framework would.

The choice of board

A moisture resistant board is used, screwed in contact with the heating panels. It is painted or tiled like any other bathroom board, and nothing indicates what it covers.

What is gained in space

No appliance on the wall, nothing taking up floor area, and a room whose five lost centimetres of height go unnoticed. In a bathroom that is generally the only place where anything could still be gained.

The recovery principle is developed on the page about passive heating, and the system on the Ceilingo radiant plaster ceiling page.