heat your body, not your house -- using an infrared heat lamp
heat your body, not your house -- using an infrared heat lamp
My goal is to keep central heating turned off as much as possible. I bundle up indoors, which works for the most part but I will struggle when temps drop low enough. And hands in cold air on a keyboard are still a problem regardless.
What about using an infrared heat lamp, which traditionally has these use cases:
- keeping pet reptiles warm
- farms: livestock and incubators
- physical therapy for humans (the claims: pain relief, skin healing/repair, blood circulation, anti-aging skin, …)
- (atypical) specifically to warm hands on keyboards (but the emitted light is white when red would be better so as to not disturb natural night vision)
The last bullet inspires some enthusiasm. But I am interested in a DiY project on-the-cheap, buying locally not online.
This array of IR LEDs will be hard to buy locally. But the question is, are LEDs even the way to go? That article has a complaint about the LEDs (ironically) having a short life. And a complaint that they do not produce heat anyway. Is that a failure of just that brand and model, or generally a gimick?
The temptation is to go cheap on the bulbs, but this ad for a heat lamp for lambs is convincing to the contrary. They sell bulbs for $21 that last ~4320 hours. These bulbs are claimed to last 6000 hours.
What about carbon heating lamps? They look like the basis of space heaters, which are notoriously ineffecient. Though I wonder if the problem is just that people use space heaters to heat a whole room.. when perhaps it’s more sensible to have a quite low setting to just keep hands or feet warm.
If a typical red filiment bulb is used, is it fair to say a simple dimmer would be useful, such as that of this fixture?
there is another thing you should keep in mind: moisture.
if the room isn't full of circulating, dried, heated air, the moisture humans expell may condense on the cold walls. then dust may stick on it and frugal organisms spreading via spores like fungus (eg. mold) or even moss may grow on it, digging into the walls. Some of those can become a health hazard.
Buy an electric blanket?
Apart from an electric blanket, in my experience nothing really works when your house is cold. Latest gadget I tried was a 700w infrared panel in the bathroom since these have been hyped recently. It's... fine, but far from the confort traditional heating offers. Mostly you feel warm on the side that radiates the heat and cold all over any other side. Also it takes so long for it to get warm, I'm done by the time it's useful. I thought 700w will be overpowered, but nah. Not even close.
I've stopped believing in the heat the human not the house mantra. It just leads to perpetual uncomfortable state any time you're transitioning from activity to activity, or you're just freezing your butt off as you're washing dishes or loading the washer or any other activity where your heart rate is not up.
A better approach I think is to insulate the house then live in confort.
Happy to see I'm not the only one. I tried many things for personal heating and they were only making discomfort a bit lower.
The best one I think was a 2 kW quartz "garden" heater, but it's 2 kW, I could heat my whole home with a gas furnace for a similar price.
In the US the max a 110v outlet can pull is about 1500W so 700W is 50% or so for what's available. I'm with you though, those heaters are a stopgap at best. Base layers and clothes/blankets can help a lot though.
These also exist they're tables with an electric heater and a blanket attached (kotatsu). It won't do much for your upper body but they do a good job keeping your legs and core warm.
edit: everyone says kotatsu, that's great
I don't have many answers, but a couple more things to think about:
The fixture needs to handle the increased heat and wattage.
If you're using something built in, the switch also needs to handle increased wattage.
Most of the above are probably not designed to handle "dimming" to control the heat.
Electric blankets might be a good starting place
Also, LEDs are generally about efficient production of light with less heat waste; I don't think it's likely to meet your needs.
I think it's a cool idea, please let us know if you're successful!
+1 on a heated blanket. Quite efficient. We use ours to pre-warm the sheets for a few minutes too!
@activistPnk i suggest a hot water bottle under a blanket
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/01/the-revenge-of-the-hot-water-bottle/also you may be interested in this guide for a diy electric heated table https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2024/12/how-to-build-an-electrically-heated-table/
edit: lol just noticed that @rob suggested the same :comfytea:
Have you already considered a desktop heating pad? It might use less energy but would definitely be easier on the eyes
I tried this. It makes hot sweaty contact points without warming my hands.
That would help when my wrists rest on the cold desk (which is ergonomically bad anyway). It doesn’t seem like a solution for typing, though if I take frequent rests for hand warming maybe that’d be viable (which I do now by via many cups of hot tea).
About the eyes, I would not want to wear goggles. But I wonder if a good lamp shade could be sufficient. Or is the reflected light also retina deteriorating?
I don’t know about the health effects of too much IR radiation but I would find it annoying. My office gets cold too but I’ve been getting by with just sitting on one hand at a time if it gets too bad. If it gets much worse I‘d consider a desktop heating pad with a small blanket over the entire area. That way both my keyboard and mouse areas are kept warm.
The only thing IR does is heat you up, so as long as you're not shining the light directly in your eyes the reflected radiation should be nowhere near enough to cause eye damage.
What kind of indoor temperatures are you hitting for it to be that cold for you? You probably want to make sure you're not running low enough temperatures to allow mold to set in, fwiw.
Regardless, if this is something you want to do, have you covered your bases, wearing a bae layer + wool sweater/socks/cap + maybe fingerless gloves?
Sorry, I don't know much about infrared lamps so I can't really help on that.
However I can give you some ideas on how to improve your thermal comfort for a very low budget. I don't have any information about your situation, your home, the temperature you are reaching so it will be very vague but hopefully it can help.
Thermal Effusivity of the walls/floor
The thermal effusivity is a metric of how "cold" a material will feel. For example stone, ceramic or glass have a very high effusivity. It means that if you touch a ceramic tile at 10°C it will feel very cold, on the other hand wood, fabric, lime or earth plaster have a low effusivity, so if you touch a piece of wood at 10°C it will not feel as cold as the ceramic.
It will also impact how much the material radiates or absorbs heat, so a room covered in wood or tapestries will feel warmer than a room covered in tiles.
You can use that to your advantage by
- covering the floor with carpets
- covering the windows with thick curtains
- covering the walls with wood, wallpaper, lime/straw plaster or go very old school with tapestries.
Insulation
I'm stating the obvious but insulating your body is the most effective form of insulation. On material nothing beats wool, it will keep you warm in any condition.
Indoor you A thick wool sweater, wool gloves, wool socks, wool scarf and most importantly a wool hat ! Even if the head rarely feel cold most of the body heat is lost through the head.
All of these can be found cheaply in thrift stores, if you have a bit of money I highly recommend investing in merino wool underlayers too ! It can make a huge difference, it's an investment but it will save money on the heating.
Then the house insulation is important, it is way more expensive but first making the house "air stream proof" will help.
For the purpose of heating, LEDs won't be more efficient than incandescent bulbs, so I'd say go for the cheaper bulbs. (They'll also dim well, unlike LEDs). The carbon heat lamp should work as well, though you'll need a reflector to focus the radiation on your hands.
Something like this?
https://www.amazon.com/Infrared-Space-Heater-wall-mounted-over-heating/dp/B0D9H7XN62