Enjoy Evening Meals Outdoors By Using An Infrared Heater – But What Is Infrared?

More and more of us are enjoying the outdoors, from sitting with a coffee watching the world go by outside a cafe, to eating a meal outside a restaurant or, of course, enjoying a barbeque in your own private back garden. But once the sun hides behind a cloud or eventually goes down in the evening the air suddenly feels quite chilly, and the idea of sitting outside suddenly wasn’t so good! Modern infrared heaters are the answer.

We all know the cheap patio heaters which glow orange! The heat is very fierce and the light very distracting! And they consume rather a lot of electricity. Technology has moved on in recent years so the modern far infrared heaters provide more comfortable warmth and do not give off any light.

So what is “far” infrared heating?

Natural infrared is the warmth we feel from the sun, it passes through air and only turns to heat upon touching a surface. So, on a Spring day the air might be very cold but we feel the warmth of the sunshine on our face. In summer, we feel the infrared rays from the sun warming our body and the stone wall or tarmac road, but when the sun disappears behind a cloud we feel instantly chilled, the air has not changed, but our feeling of warmth from the sun’s infrared rays has stopped! The warm stone wall and tarmac keep giving off their warmth long into the evening.

Infrared is part of the light spectrum, beyond red colour is near infrared, (which is why the old heaters glowed orange,) new heaters use far infrared, which is further away and therefore does not give off any visible light. Far infrared heaters work from a very specific area of wavelength, 6 to 10 microns, to make sure the warmth given off is much more comfortable to the human body.

Did you know the human body gives off its own infrared energy? A warming winter hug is far infrared energy given off from one body and received by another, infrared given off from the body is in the range of 8 to 10 microns. Thermal imaging cameras pick up areas of heat which are actually areas of infrared energy.

So, back to summer evenings in the garden, if we use a far infrared heater we can feel comfortable and naturally warm even after the sun goes down because far infrared heaters warm people rather than the air. Heating the air is very wasteful of energy because the air just blows away!

This blog was provided by Multi Heat Energy Systems