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?
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