Infrared Heating Panels

Richie-from-the-Boro

Infrared Radiant heating panels positioned on the ceiling are brilliant at heating both people and anything else in the room. Two infrared Radiant heating panels at floor level one placed in front and one placed behind someone sitting on a stool are brilliant at heating people. Anyone or any thing not in direct line with the infra ray will feel cold.



Long pockets, your mammy's supplementary 160w placed in direct line with any surface will indeed warm that surface. Most of the rest of your claims are 'felt' benefits and can not really exist [in air] unless perhaps that 160w is on 24/365 in which case anything it heats for example a tiled floor, a sideboard, or curtains will eventually become of themselves a radiator - re-emitting and radiating heat, this time into the air.

Cardew

long_pockets wrote: »

Can anyone offer an explanation as to how little an amount of energy can have such a big effect?

IMO the best analogy is a desk reading lamp against lighting the whole room. A low powered light will enable someone at the desk to read as it beams light to the object requiring illumination. However light levels in other parts of the room are low.


In the same way a low powered infrared heater can 'beam' heat toward an object.(a person) but heat levels in other parts of the room are low.


Although slightly different, I have been sitting at the top of a Ski slope on a sunny day and feeling the warmth from the sun(and getting sunburnt) yet the air temperature is close to freezing.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Cardew makes a point about desk reading light bulbs, lets move that debate along with a bit of physics. IR heating moves in a straight line source to target, a ceiling light [an electromagnetic wave with just a slightly shorter wavelength than infrared] is able to reach all most but not all parts of the room without blockage.

For example you have a lightbulb or a ceiling IR heater, but the area under the computer desk is [line of sight issues] is dark or freezing underneath, then there's the issue of health or safety, IR @ 6-15 microns is particularly good at heating humans, intense enough, but not enough to damage human tissue.. Most effective among the IR heaters are those non-panel parabolic reflected heaters, but almost without exception domestic IR heaters are always sold in panel ....... never in parabolic form.

Richie-from-the-Boro

fishybusiness wrote: »

As an IR panel fan I tend to disagree with much written against IR panels here. I do agree with this. Perhaps it is more accurate to say something like

"My IR panel is cheaper to run than my oil filled radiator, and I feel warm enough".

But not cheaper than a parabolic IR heater, and not more comfortable than ceiling IR. Where I do agree is that the use of floor or wall panel supplementary human [not air mass] heating can cheaply make you feel more thermal comfort at lower [air mass] room temperatures. The problem with both this scenario and ceiling IR is you would have to focus the IR beam on 1/10th of the room and occupy 1/10th of the room. In the case of 'long pockets' mammy even a low output IR directed at one spot for 12 hours, her supplementary IR is absorbed by the fabric of the room then recycled back to air-mass as radiated [from the room fabric] heat.

long_pockets

I've been doing a bit of research on infrared, can anyone help me out with this:

Infrared warms objects, people etc.. everything absorbs infrared and everything radiates infrared, so technically all heaters radiate infrared it just depends on how much of the energy goes to convection and how much is radiated. True?

If I have a Radiant Heater panel (lets call it Radiant as this is its main characteristic of heat transfer) let's say 70% of the heat transfer is radiant, so it's a very efficient radiator of heat, we then have a much larger percentage of electrical energy (which is now heat energy) being absorbed by the thermal mass of the room and thus more energy able to radiate back into the room. Am I doing okay so far?

A percentage of the radiant heat will obviously warm the air, initially the 30% that is not radiant but convection, there is also a very, very small amount of heat conducted into the wall or ceiling by the brackets, there are also very minute electrical losses within the circuits, but both are negligible enough for us to say 100% electrical energy is converted 100% to heat energy.

So thinking about this logically, if I did not need to warm the air or could stay warm without warming the air, or could keep on warming the air with energy already in the mass of the room then why would I use the bulk of energy to directly warm the air first?

We all know that heat does not rise only warm air rises so all the air I have warmed up can be sitting at the top of the room and I'm at the bottom, also my warmed objects do not go out of the window, through the door or leak through the ceiling, or am I missing something?

The Mother-in-law still swears by the heater, I'm thinking of getting one myself, just curious.

lstar337

long_pockets wrote: »

I've been doing a bit of research on infrared, can anyone help me out with this:

Infrared warms objects, people etc.. everything absorbs infrared and everything radiates infrared, so technically all heaters radiate infrared it just depends on how much of the energy goes to convection and how much is radiated. True?

If I have a Radiant Heater panel (lets call it Radiant as this is its main characteristic of heat transfer) let's say 70% of the heat transfer is radiant, so it's a very efficient radiator of heat, we then have a much larger percentage of electrical energy (which is now heat energy) being absorbed by the thermal mass of the room and thus more energy able to radiate back into the room. Am I doing okay so far?

A percentage of the radiant heat will obviously warm the air, initially the 30% that is not radiant but convection, there is also a very, very small amount of heat conducted into the wall or ceiling by the brackets, there are also very minute electrical losses within the circuits, but both are negligible enough for us to say 100% electrical energy is converted 100% to heat energy.

So thinking about this logically, if I did not need to warm the air or could stay warm without warming the air, or could keep on warming the air with energy already in the mass of the room then why would I use the bulk of energy to directly warm the air first?

We all know that heat does not rise only warm air rises so all the air I have warmed up can be sitting at the top of the room and I'm at the bottom, also my warmed objects do not go out of the window, through the door or leak through the ceiling, or am I missing something?

The Mother-in-law still swears by the heater, I'm thinking of getting one myself, just curious.

Starting to sound a lot like spam.

Think of it this way. Any heat you put in with infra red will still end up heating the air, because the cold air will draw heat out of the objects the infra red is heating.

Therefore, the amount of heat required is the same no matter what form the electric heater takes, and all electric heaters are 100% efficient. So we can conclude that infra red will offer no saving over any other form of electric heater.

What infra red does do well is heat a person or object that doesn't move effectively, but then so would a blanket and a hot water bottle.

stator

Hot water bottle is nowhere near 100% efficient

Plus being covered in blankets limits your movement.

If I'm sitting at a computer I know I'd prefer an Infrared heater

long_pockets

Can't remember if I like spam, used to be nice fried!

How much energy did you use to warm the hot water for the bottle, efficiency by percentage please.

I was hoping to get an open minded response, stator is right I also prefer a heater to a blanket!

lstar337

stator wrote: »

Hot water bottle is nowhere near 100% efficient

Never said it was

stator wrote: »

Plus being covered in blankets limits your movement.

That's the point I was making. Infra red heaters also limit your movement, even if they are not as restrictive as a blanket.

stator wrote: »

If I'm sitting at a computer I know I'd prefer an Infrared heater

Good for you, that is the kind of situation they are useful for.

lstar337

long_pockets wrote: »

Can't remember if I like spam, used to be nice fried!

Your posts are sounding like disguised adverts for infra red panels.

long_pockets wrote: »

How much energy did you use to warm the hot water for the bottle, efficiency by percentage please.

Sigh, failed to understand the point I was making.

long_pockets wrote: »

I was hoping to get an open minded response, stator is right I also prefer a heater to a blanket!

Open minded to the point of questioning everything we know about physics? Sorry, I'll choose the greatest minds in history over the words of a MSE user with a post count of 3.