The Village Halls Podcast
A podcast for anyone involved in the running of Britain's 10,000 village, church and community and anyone interested in the vital community services they provide.
The Village Halls Podcast
How Spot Heating Can Transform Your Village Hall
We explore spot heating technology with Joe Bristow from BN Thermic, diving into how this instant, energy-efficient solution can transform village halls by heating people directly rather than warming the air.
• Spot heating provides immediate warmth without needing to pre-heat spaces, making it perfect for sporadic hall usage
• Spot heating targets people and objects rather than air temperature, working even with doors open
• Installation can often utilise existing wiring, making it cost-effective for halls with limited budgets
• Advanced control systems include motion sensors that activate heaters only when spaces are occupied
• The technology creates a noticeable "curtain of warmth" that transforms user comfort in otherwise difficult-to-heat spaces
• Integration with battery storage and renewable energy sources supports net-zero carbon goals
• A hybrid approach combining spot heating with minimal background heating protects building fabric from damp
Entries for the Village Halls Inspiration Awards 2025 are now open until September 30th. Visit our website at villagehallspodcast.com to find out more and submit your hall for consideration.
Hi, I'm Marc Smith and welcome to the Village Halls podcast, sponsored by Allied Westminster, the UK's largest specialist provider of Village Hall insurance, and the home of Village Guard. Before we begin, a quick reminder that entries are now open for the Village Halls Inspiration Awards 2025, celebrating the incredible work happening in village, community and church halls across the country. You can apply between the 1st of May and the 30th of September, so do consider putting your hall forward. Welcome to the Village Halls podcast, the show that explores the big ideas behind our small community spaces. In this episode, we're focusing on a very specific kind of warmth heating the people, not the room. It's called spot heating and it can be a game changer for older or drafty halls that are costly to keep warm. My guest today is Joe Bristow from BN Thermic, experts in electric heating systems designed especially for spaces like yours. Welcome to the podcast, Joe. Thanks very much for having me on, Marc. Oh, you're very welcome. So could you tell us a little bit about BN Thermic and your role within the company?
Joe Bristow:Yeah well, BNThermic. We're a UK-based family-run manufacturer of electric heaters. We've been based in Crawley, west Sussex, sort of near Gatwick, for 20 years, though the building's been in use for about 60 years developing heaters, and we were born out of a company called bush nelson in 2005, so we're actually celebrating our 20th anniversary a week Saturday. We've got a nice big party congratulations um, thank you very much.
Joe Bristow:So we sell through uk electrical wholesalers. So we sell through as wholesalers all over the country. So we're not installers, we're just purely manufacturers. And then myself, I've been the technical sales manager here for 11 years and my basic role is to lead the sales and customer service side of the business, so ensuring the customers get the right heater for the project, not just what looks good on paper, making sure that we actually get down to the nitty-gritty of what is needed to make sure they get the right solution for them.
Marc Smith:Excellent. So what type of buildings do you primarily supply to so?
Joe Bristow:Basically all commercial and industrial buildings, a few domestic here and there. So we're talking things like sports halls, warehouses, village halls, obviously, and we have a real strong focus on churches as well. We work quite closely with the Church of England because they're trying to get to net zero across the whole of their range by 2030. So, yeah, that they're primarily we do, but there's not many applications that we haven't got the ability to offer a solution for.
Marc Smith:Excellent. Well, I'm glad you mentioned village halls there. It would have been a bit awkward if I was like no, it would be. Yeah. So we spoke earlier in the week and we discussed something called spot heating. So and I wrongly said infrared, so this spot heating, which we can get into, how it works later. But so when I call it infrared because I spoke to someone else about this as well, that was doing the podcast, and they also mentioned infrared, but it's wrong. So what is infrared and why is it not?
Joe Bristow:what you do there Infrared is a sort of generic term for the wavelength of infrared heating. So in infrared we had everything from shortwave heating all the way through to long wake. The problem with the term infrared is you could be talking about very different styles of heater along that spectrum and you can end up getting yourself in quite a pickle because with you're talking about one end of the spectrum, I'm talking about the other end of the spectrum and therefore we're talking at two completely different styles of heating that are going to provide different forms. All infrared heaters radiate out heat, but the way that translate into how we feel it and what it's really used for differs quite quite largely all right, right, so spot heating, then this is still I have.
Marc Smith:I mean, it's obviously you'll know inside out, but in my head it's still new. I had never heard of it until maybe. Well, you mentioned, I did hear about it once, but I didn't think anything of it. So what is spot heating?
Joe Bristow:So spot heating is heating people and objects directly, rather than trying to increase the overall air temperature. The simplest way to put it it's a little bit like sunlight You're outside in the shade, you feel cold. You walk into the sunlight, you feel warm. The air temperature hasn't changed, but you're now getting the. You're being spot heated by the sun. That's the simplest way to put it, I think.
Marc Smith:Right, right, getting the. You're being spot heated by the sun, that's, that's the simplest way to put it, I think right.
Joe Bristow:Right, why? Why do you think they work well within village halls, in particular old village halls? So the big problem you get with village halls is they. They tend to be poorly insulated, relatively drafty and often in sporadic use. So the problem you have with going down the other option, which is space heating, so building up a body of warm air, yeah, if you're using it sporadically and only for a few hours at a time, by the time you've turned the spacing system on and got it up to temperature, you're ready to leave. So it's a really ineffective system. You've effectively just wasted some energy that you didn't get the benefit from. Yeah, so when you go down the spot heating route, it's absolutely instantaneous. So you turn it on only when that space is occupied and you feel the benefit absolutely instantly. So that's the, that's the true benefit of it all.
Marc Smith:Right now this might sound like a crazy question, uh, so, when you have this spot heating on we did this is just a thought would it matter if the door was open to the outside?
Joe Bristow:No, that's the interesting part, because you're not heating the air at all. In fact, the idea is to bypass the moisture in the air, which is how you feel warmth, and you're just heating anything with mass. So people objects. So because of that, you don't need to worry about doors, roller shutter doors, windows, things like that. You're still heating the person.
Marc Smith:Right, so insulation doesn't really matter then, no, not at all.
Joe Bristow:The only benefit of having higher levels of insulation are if you're using it for long periods. Let's say you had a day where you're using it from nine till five. What will eventually happen is, as the shortwave energy hits you, hits you directly and hits the floor, you start to convect out the heat. So eventually you actually will bring the overall temperature up, but that's, that's the sort of secondary benefit of it rather than the primary benefit of it all right, so you're saying they're nine to five.
Marc Smith:Is it a crossover between when spot heaters are perfect and a point where they are no longer. You know you're better to use the convection heating. Yes, there definitely is.
Joe Bristow:Um, it would be very much on building use and um things like heat loss and and air loss. So if you had a building that was in consistent use monday to friday 90 or 5, as an example then actually you're probably going to get the benefits of space heating because when it hits its temperature it turns off, whereas with the spot heaters they'll be on for the majority of that day. Maybe when the area gets slightly warmer you might turn them off, but realistically, throughout that whole day they would be on. But with a space heating system they're going to come in and off from that thermostat, so you're going to end up saving energy. So it's a real. This is why it's important that we understand exactly what we're doing in terms of how often it's in use and the the insulation levels of the building, because there's no one size fits all approach. Yeah, I have to really understand what you're doing and particularly how the building is in use.
Marc Smith:You just said something there about a thermostat. So with spot heating, obviously a thermostat in my house knows the temperature of the room, which I assume is the air as well. How does a spot heater know the temperature that it's putting out, like say, oh I want to feel 21 degrees? How does it know? Does it just put out a weaker? I'm going to call it a signal, but it's obviously not. But how does that regulate a temperature?
Joe Bristow:So it doesn't regulate the temperature as such. Usually they're controlled by things like on-off buttons, push button timers or movement sensors. So somebody walks into the room and it goes on. Now what you can do is, before that, before those controls, you can put in a thermostat so they don't have the option of turning on because it's 25 degrees or whatever it's going to be, and only when it drops below a certain temperature is it allowed to turn on. Once the on-off button or the push-button time on the movement sensor is engaged, so you can add that into it to stop any unreasonable heat build-up.
Marc Smith:For no, when the when the air temperature has increased oh, that's good, yeah, yeah, I always assume that it's cold in the uk, but is that you do get warm periods, like today, I suppose? Yeah, you wouldn't need it. On the, the cost between the two like, not the cost of the actual product but the cost of the energy. Is it comparable with the? Obviously you don't have to preheat with the spot heating, but is once it's on. Is it comparable with the, the old, old-fashioned heating like?
Joe Bristow:the panel heaters or you probably need more overall energy to spot heat, because you need a a larger amount of heat to heat you directly. But the benefit comes in the reduced time scale. So, for example, if you were trying to I don't you had a yoga class between 9 and 11 and you were trying to space heat that area. Depending on the building's heat loss, you might well be turning that on a couple of hours prior to give it time to build up to it. So you're getting a lot of energy in use when the building's not occupied. With the spot heaters, you turn it on the moment you need it and then the moment you don't need it you're turning it straight off. So it's more to do with the reduced timescale rather than the overall energy being used at that time.
Marc Smith:All right, that's interesting actually. Yeah, so if a village hall was looking to install these and they've got existing heating in there which heats the air, and it's a sporadically used hall and it fits all the criteria, do they need to rewire? Or can you take off a panel heater and put on a spot heater? Or do they need to be high up, is it?
Joe Bristow:interchangeable. They tend to be higher up than panel heaters would be. So warm-mounted panel heaters because they need to be high up so they get a nice spread, so they can spread the heat out quite wide and quite far. It depends on the size of the panel heater. So from experience in village halls you tend to be having three kilowatt heaters on the wall. That tends as a rough guideline. Now panel heaters tend to be somewhere between two and three kilowatts. So, assuming you've got the correct supply there, yeah, at that point it's just a case of raising the wire up to the point where you need to mount the heater itself, um, and obviously making the heat safe that's.
Marc Smith:That's really good that yeah, because I think a lot of village halls, well, they'll have heating already, especially the older halls.
Joe Bristow:It'll be the old style heater and the fact you can just change it straight over, as is uh is yes, it's pretty good yeah, well, that's the idea to try and keep it to minimal windstool costs where possible when we so I do a lot of site visits where I get out to village halls and go and see it firsthand, and we always try to keep that in mind because that's going to reduce your installation costs quite a lot and there's not a lot of money for village hogs, so we try and keep that in mind.
Marc Smith:Yeah yeah, I suppose these this type of village hog we're talking about, they're, I suppose they're older and they have issues with damp. What's? What are the? Is there any complications when it comes to spot heating? If? If there is an issue with damp, or or do you battle that with a dehumidifier? Or can you maybe add a convection heater alongside spot heaters, just to tackle some of the challenges that the halls have?
Joe Bristow:Yeah, you're putting the nail on the head, really. So, because spot heating is just heating when it's needed. They're often turned off for vast periods of time, sometimes even days. So in terms of things like damp in the building or even low temperatures, especially where you are, you're going to get incredibly low temperatures. Sometimes it makes absolute sense to keep a convector heater in the background, just maintaining a very low temperature. So only maintaining it, let's say, eight, nine degrees, which isn't that much warmer than the front of a fridge, but that way it stopped one. It protects your pipe work from freezing, so you haven't got to worry about any water pipes and it just maintains the fabric of the building slightly warmer, um to hopefully, hopefully, stop damp. So that's often what is done all right, interesting.
Marc Smith:Yeah, so you mentioned um with the spot here. You mentioned that little buttons at the side that can they, they can they, can control them, and then a motion sensor. So that's really quite clever. So if you're walking, you never actually really need to turn them on. So I assume you would say or do not come on. Uh, below 21 degrees, if you detect movement, check if it's 21 degrees. If it's below, turn on. If not, stay off. Is that what that's all supplied? Is that all supplied with the actual heaters you, you make?
Joe Bristow:or yeah. So they're all different parts, but we said all three. So what you would in this scenario you would have power going to a thermostat and then, through the thermostat, goes to the movement sensor and then to the heaters. So what you're effectively doing are the first sort of yes or no is the thermostat. So if it's below your set point, well, that's a yes. Lets the power pass, yeah. And then when you come in and you walk in front of the movement sensor, that's the next yes, and that allows the power to get through the heater, which then which then energizes it. So, yeah, that's exactly how it would work.
Marc Smith:Oh, excellent, that's fantastic. So I assume it does. But do you integrate with battery storage and renewable energy? I take it it's just a case of just literally swap it out and it'll work with whatever existing system they have in place in the village hall.
Joe Bristow:Yeah, all the battery storage is just a power source, so it's just getting it through to there, so absolutely all right, and it's fast becoming a much more used thing. Even churches now are doing that, um. So yeah, it's. It's very much becoming a modern thing to do, which is a great idea yeah, definitely so in your experience.
Marc Smith:What uh questions should a hall committee member ask when they're sourcing heating quotes? So this could be for spot heating or any type of heating.
Joe Bristow:The first one seems unusual for me to say but what's the downside to this system? Because there's always downsides to it and it's better to be aware of the reality of the system rather than the sort of the the ideal system that could it could be. You will know what's. What's the reality. So, for example, with spot heaters, what the reality is, it's not going to be um helpful for the fabric if the building's left unheated for days at a time. So in that point you might need to look at a convection system if that's something you're worried about.
Joe Bristow:Yeah, if you're using a space heating system, or how long, what's going to be the running cost? If I need to run that for 90 or 5, what's the realistic running cost going to be? Which is very difficult to work out because it comes down to heat loss, air changes, outside temperature. So it's trying to work out from reality and a lot of the times you can do that by looking at your current system and you can look at the running cost. It's been for that. If you have a space heating system currently, you can sort of try and look at that and then try and use a comparison to see how much it's going to cost to run.
Joe Bristow:So I think that's that would be the important bit. The other thing would be the control, because the control is really key to reducing your energy costs. That has the largest impact, in my opinion, of how you're going to keep those running costs to a minimum but still making sure that you get the benefit that you're looking for. So I think the control becomes really important and I always joke that we're a heating company but we're also a controls company, because over the years we've had so many ideas from site visits and seeing the real world reality and we've created controls based on just these. So I think the controls are a really big asset. They're the two things I would suggest that we ask.
Marc Smith:Yeah, I did notice that on your website. So you actually manufacture the controls themselves, the little wall panels.
Joe Bristow:Yeah, that's it. So a good example is movement sensors. There aren't a lot on the market at all and very few that can deal with the heaters that we use for spot heating. So we have one of our engineers can you please make one? And then six months later we have got two movement sensors because we saw a need for it, and I'm on site enough that I see that there's a real, a real benefit to having them, and within six months they're there already that's amazing, that's yeah, that's quite, uh, that's quite a feat.
Marc Smith:It's great to see that that you're. You see an issue and you can. You can actually solve it yeah, it's not like you're, yeah, you don't have to go looking for the, the solution you, you can create one yourself yeah, we're very lucky.
Joe Bristow:We've got quite a few engineers that are. They're very quick to react, um, and it's a challenge and they like a challenge. It's sort of fixing with their, with their mindset really, um, so there's been a, there's been a few controllers that I've been directly involved with, which is quite nice because there's not many jobs where you can go. I think we need a product and then eventually the product turns up. I mean it's slightly scary because then you need to sell it, because if you don't sell it, it's quite a nice way to work excellent.
Marc Smith:Yeah, so when you've your experience, when you've been putting these systems into halls, what's the feedback been?
Joe Bristow:We always get the feedback that, especially with spot heating systems, of how beneficial it is having it work absolutely instantaneously. Because the reality is a lot of village halls have old spacing systems and over the years the use of the village hall has changed, but the problem is the heating system hasn't gone along with it, so they've been turning the systems on and they're never really getting the benefit of it, whereas when we go in and we suggest spotting systems, once they're installed, the response is brilliant because they just have this active, instant heat and it's completely noticeable. And that's that's the. That's the best bit about it is they can notice that and people walk in and go oh wow, that's that, that's suddenly a great, a great amount of heat that they can feel. So I think that's that's the. The biggest feedback we get is how brilliant the instantaneous um heat is all right.
Marc Smith:All right. Here's stupid question number two for you. Does it feel any different? And I really want to have a shot of one of these things, but does it feel any? Can you feel a difference in the type of heat that's coming from these spot heaters or what's you?
Joe Bristow:you can, yes is the honest answer. So, especially when they're first turned on, because there's a relatively defined beam pattern. So if you imagine a, a light unit, it has a beam. If you imagine a beam like that, but with heat, so you, you notice a very defined beam pattern. So I feel warm here and if I take a step backwards I won't feel warm. So there's a certain that. But having said that, assuming we've got the layout correct, which is obviously my job, we have.
Joe Bristow:You give it 15, 20 minutes and where the floor starts to warm up, the walls start to warm up and they start to slowly convect out the heat. It feels relatively similar to to a normal heating system. Um, the we use them in our warehouse, because massive warehouse don't want to heat the whole thing, and there's a particular run of a sort of like manufacturing run when we, where we build the heaters, and you, when you walk into where the heaters cover, it's almost like a curtain of warmth and anywhere within that that area, all right, right, it's warm. And it's really unusual because outside of it, where we don't have the heaters, it's cool as the as the rest of the area is. Yeah, you sort of take that step through that barrier and it's it's really nice that's amazing.
Marc Smith:Yeah, I I'm. Yeah, I need to have a shot. I need to find someone with one of these. Yeah, it's gonna have a shot. It does sound quite cool. Yeah. So one thing you said there. So it does. It heats any, any surface the spot heater. So one of the issues that we had this is years ago when I played badminton down the hall, see, when it was cold and the floor would be slippery because of the condensation. So that would also tackle that as well, because it would heat the floor.
Joe Bristow:It would certainly heat the floor. If it's directed towards the floor, it would absolutely do that. I mean, we actually use them in squash courts quite a lot. So especially with sporadically used squash courts, yeah, that trying to build up a body warm in there is nigh on impossible, and a lot of the time they're open to a gallery.
Joe Bristow:So you're not just heating the squash court, you've got to heat the gallery as well, yeah, um, so we we've we do a lot of squash court heating with them, um, and they're sort of mounted high up and and they've been down over it and it works an absolute treat. So, yeah, they're certainly going to heat the floor there, absolutely.
Marc Smith:So how long have I been oblivious to this technology? How long have they been out for?
Joe Bristow:Oh, I mean years and years, is it really? Oh, 100%. So they I don't know if you remember the old pool cord bathroom heaters oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I grew up with one of those that's a style of it and they sort of moved on from there and, as far as I'm aware, sort of early 2000s is when they really sort of came onto the mass market and they used to have these like a red filter over the top and you'd get this bright red light. Well, it was warm, which is lovely, yeah, but it would just discolor everything. Everything in that area would change color, right, um.
Joe Bristow:And then we introduced a gold lamp I don't know when we introduced it, um, which had a much lesser light output, but still a light output nonetheless, yeah. And then I'm gonna say about five years ago but I'm sure I've been saying about five years ago for two years we came up with a new lamp and it's called the magic lamp, right? Basically, it's primarily used in churches, where they don't want a bright red light, yeah, and you get the same heat intensity, but you don't get the discoloration. You can certainly see the discoloration, um, you can certainly see that the lamp is on. So you can certainly see that the filament is energized, um, but you have a heavily reduced light output. So they've been around a long time and they're just slowly getting better with every generation that comes through right.
Marc Smith:well, it's a good time to have this because a lot of halls, everyone's looking for net zero. Everyone, everyone's trying to become as energy efficient as possible, so they do make a lot of sense if you don't have. As I was saying earlier on, I was looking at a village hall that got I think it was about 2.1 million to convert the hall into a warm hub, which is fantastic, but there's so many halls that don't have it, so this is actually another good way to do it without if you've not got 2.1 million spare you can, you can still um save costs.
Marc Smith:You know, save a lot of energy costs by putting uh or converting what you've got already to uh to spot heating yeah, it really is and and and really focus in on the, the use of the building.
Joe Bristow:That's where it is. And then if you go with an electrical supplier that has, um, has like a net zero, um sort of agreement you've got you're getting a very green electricity through to the building, adding the fact you're not using fossil fuels, you're using electric heaters, yeah, and you're well on your way to net zero or decarbonization excellent.
Marc Smith:Well, that's been a. I don't have any more silly questions to ask you. They seem silly in my head, but now, probably, listening back, I think I shouldn't have asked that, but I think it's. I can't believe I've missed this. I I don't know why I've missed this, but yeah, it's so fascinating and I think it's a. It totally makes sense for, you know, for churches we like any big space that's, um, that's used sporadically. Certainly Village Hall us was churches every Sunday. But yeah, I think it's amazing.
Marc Smith:Thank you very much for coming on, no problem at all. Thanks very much for having me. You're very welcome. Many thanks to our headline sponsor and specialist Village Hall insurance provider, allied Westminster, the home of Village Guard, for making this podcast possible, and to online booking system provider, Hallmaster, who also sponsor our podcast and can be found at Hallmaster. co. uk. You've been listening to the Village Halls podcast, a unique listening community for Britain's village community and church halls and anyone interested in the vital services they provide. Don't forget entries for the Village Halls Inspiration Awards 2025 are open now until the 30th of September, so visit our website to find out more and get involved. We will be back again soon with another episode. For more information, visit thevillagehallspodcast. com, where you'll also find links to our social media pages. Thanks again for listening in and until next time. Goodbye for now.
