Why IR Spot Heat > IR Basics

Infrared Heating Basics

Heating people, not air.

Human thermal comfort is a function of ambient air temperature and humidity, the cooling effect of air movement and the amount of infrared, or radiant, energy shining on and being absorbed by your skin and clothes.

Humans at rest tend to be comfortable at around 70°F or 22°C.  When the temperature drops, we put on more clothes, get more active or turn up the heat. 

Turning up the heat often means heating the air that surrounds us with some sort of central or in-space (local) convective heater.  Air passing or being forced over a warm element or a pipe filled with warm water or hot combustion products absorbs the element's heat and becomes warmer. 

Turning up the heat can also mean increasing the amount of radiant energy shining on you and the objects around you.  There is a broad range of surface radiant heaters (floor, ceiling and wall; electric, hot water and gas) and reflector focused radiant heaters (low intensity (temperature) tube gas heaters and high intensity (temperature) gas and electric heaters.) 

In many situations radiant, in-space (local) heaters are dramatically more energy efficient than any other heating choice.  The energy efficiency stems from several factors:

• Central heating systems are designed to get the whole building to 70°F, even when much of the building may be unoccupied.  In-space (local) heaters, of any type, equipped with proper controls only heat the parts of the building that need heat, allowing most of the building to operate at lower temperatures and with lower heat losses.
• Because you feel warmer with radiant energy shining on you, you can feel warm despite ambient temperatures lower than by as much as 15°F to 20°F.  As heat losses from a structure increase in proportion to the difference between inside and outside air temperature, heat losses are reduced by 50% when the inside temperature is lowered to 55°F and the outside temperature is 40°F.

In situations where there is poor or no insulation (factories, warehouses, outside) and high air exchange (factories, warehouses, stores, outside) the heat losses are huge, and therefore so are the savings with radiant heat.

For more information on HotZone™ heaters and their application, please visit the Applications, Products and Reference sections of this website.

Applications

Agriculture

Aircraft Hangars

Arenas

Big Box Store Transitional Areas

Car Washes

Construction Sites

Driving Ranges

Equipment Heating

Factories

Garages
Residential  & Commercial

Hospitality
Pools & Patios

Ice and Snow Melting

Loading Docks

Outdoor Living
Residential

Public Facility Transitional Areas

Warehouses

Workshops

Schaefer Ventilation Equipment
1 Industrial Blvd. Suite 101, Sauk Rapids, MN  56379 - Ph. 1-800-779-3267