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?
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
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.