Infared fleece heating

[Flossy1234]

I'm wondering if anyone has had infrared fleece heating installed in their ceilings? It's been suggested to me as a 'next generation' infrared film (as seen on Danny's house, Grand Designs a few months ago) which can be plastered into walls and/or ceilings (or potentially under floor although the companies I spoke to differed on the suitability of it underfloor). Apparently the film has been around in other countries for years but there have been a few issues, so this has been developed as an alternative. I'm keen to be eco and embrace new products/systems but also wary of going down a less well trodden path. I have the people I need to recommend the layout etc. and install it - the plasterer would then just skim over it as normal. Installation isn't necessarily cheap, but running costs are very low (and we can team it up with solar). I'd be keen to hear from anyone with experience of this. Thanks in advance...

[SteamyTea]

Many people will tell you how wonderful infra red, and far infra red heating is.

I shall say it will be rubbish.

It is just electrical resistance after all.

 

[JohnMo]

Been looking into IR recently. From what I can tell

 

Room or person heating isn't as quick as made out.

 

It's very directional 

 

You are not heating the air, just the room furniture, walls, floor and people, so can be operated at slightly lower temp than radiators.

 

Unless very well insulated it's going to cost a fortune to run. Even at lower room temps, you are are paying 28p per kWh.

 

If you have high blood pressure and a few other conditions - one site was up front and said to look at other heating technology as IR was not suitable for you.

 

I spent my money on a fan coil heater instead.

[saveasteading]

It would have the one advantage of making your head warm, especially when standing. Perhaps the floor too but insulation would be vital.

Also I can see this being useful in a small, occupied area of a large space.

Eg a till operator in a retail shed.

The whole point is that the air is not being heated as much as with other sources, but it is 100% electric so expensive. 

I've stood next to an infra red heater disguised as a framed picture. It would make sense if next to a desk or chair in an otherwise cool room.

I wouldn't consider it for primary domestic heating.

 

[ReedRichards]

All radiative heating follows an inverse square law if the heat source is small, meaning if you move twice as far away from the heat source you will get one quarter of the heat you were getting.  Spreading the heat source over a wide area like a wall should significantly reduce this, although the adjoining bits of wall and floor might get quite hot.  And presumably quite a bit of heat will go to the other side of the wall.

 

As others say, direct electrical heating is expensive to run.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, ReedRichards said:

Spreading the heat source over a wide area like a wall should significantly reduce this

Almost.

Trouble with upping the area covered is that the area you want heated i.e. 1 m² of human facing the radiating surface is a very small fraction of what you are actually heating.  So the efficiency becomes very poor.

 

Add to that, we constantly breath in air, if that air is cold because 'infra red heating does not heat the air' we then have to expend more body energy to keep out core temperature high.

 

I also think that without a decent thickness of insulation behind the IR panel, most of the energy will travel 'backwards' and heat something else.

[ReedRichards]

Maybe it's time to revive my idea of converting a room into a giant microwave oven and then just cooking yourself very gently; it's the perfect solution to warming the person and not anything else.  Pot plants in the room might suffer, however.

[SteamyTea]

13 minutes ago, ReedRichards said:

Pot plants in the room might suffer, however.

And your WiFi

[Galvin1972]

On 12/01/2024 at 07:38, ReedRichards said:

Maybe it's time to revive my idea of converting a room into a giant microwave oven and then just cooking yourself very gently; it's the perfect solution to warming the person and not anything else.  Pot plants in the room might suffer, however.

Haha, I love the imagination but just to put your mind at ease, turning a room into a microwave isn’t quite the way to go! That said, you’re actually not far off from how far infrared heating works (safely, of course!). With TUV Certification (TÜV (short for Technischer Überwachungsverein, which means “Technical Inspection Association” in German) refers to a group of independent German organisations that test and certify products for safety, quality and compliance with international standards.) 

 

Far infrared doesn’t use microwaves — it emits a gentle, natural wavelength of heat (similar to the sun’s warmth) that heats people and objects directly, not the air. It’s totally safe and incredibly efficient. No radiation risks, no zapping and definitely no cooked humans involved. 😄

 

We’ve installed this type of heating in over 3,000 buildings so far with plastered in infrared heating — including hospitals, care homes, schools and homes across the UK and can proudly report: not a single sandwich has spoiled, no hamsters have been harmed and all pot plants are still standing.
 

So yes warming people directly without overheating the air or environment is absolutely possible. You just don’t need to turn your living room into a science experiment to do it.

Edited August 1 by Galvin1972

[SteamyTea]

14 minutes ago, Galvin1972 said:

Far infrared doesn’t use microwaves — it emits a gentle, natural wavelength of heat

As opposed to what, unnatural waves?

 

Do you have direct comparisons about the energy savings compared to traditional heating systems?

Would be normal data to have for a commercial organisation.

Edited August 1 by SteamyTea

[Galvin1972]

6 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

As opposed to what, unnatural waves?

 

For a Cornishman who sees more sun than we do up North I would suggest educating yourself in the infrared spectrum. 

 

A 20-year-old, 3-bedroom property was originally set to be heated using 12.5kW of electric panel heaters. Instead, we installed our plastered-in infrared heating system, which provided the same comfort using just 5.6kW operating at only 70W per m².

 

The results spoke for themselves. The client, who offers all-inclusive rental agreements, has since chosen our system for a further four HMO (House in Multiple Occupation) properties due to its efficiency, reliability and lower energy usage. With the added benefit or preventing mould/mildew.

Edited August 1 by Galvin1972

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, Galvin1972 said:

For a Cornishman who sees more sun than we do up North I would suggest educating yourself in the infrared spectrum.

Don't think I will bother.

[Galvin1972]

5 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Don't think I will bother.

And that is the answer right there  the amount of people we hear saying 'Doesn't heat rise?' are in the same bag as yourself. We just heated Kevin Mclouds home he is a convert from the 'heat rise' brigade.

[SteamyTea]

Just now, Galvin1972 said:

same bag as yourself

Your new to this site so I feel no need to defend my pedigree, and don't ever put me in the McCloud camp, I have had my run ins with him on an associated matter.

 

[Galvin1972]

1 minute ago, SteamyTea said:

Your new to this site so I feel no need to defend my pedigree, and don't ever put me in the McCloud camp, I have had my run ins with him on an associated matter.

 

So I see with your 22000 comments - guessing happily retired? 

[JohnMo]

Isn't there an issue with pace markers? Many manufacturers not recommending it?

1 hour ago, Galvin1972 said:

only 70W per m².

Wouldn't include 'only' as 70W per m² is still high. That would 'only' be £80 a day for me on a standard tariff. Where as with my heat pump and some decent insulation I would be closer to £3 (at -9, on octopus cosy, and 192m²)

[Kelvin]

I’m thinking  about using some suspended panels to heat the desk space in my garage. It’s only occasionally used though and I only need heating in the depth of winter so a bit unconvinced it’s worth the cost to buy and run. 

[Galvin1972]

2 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Isn't there an issue with pace markers? Many manufacturers not recommending it?

Wouldn't include 'only' as 70W per m² is still high. That would 'only' be £80 a day for me on a standard tariff. Where as with my heat pump and some decent insulation I would be closer to £3 (at -9, on octopus cosy, and 192m²)

How do you get to £80 a day? Just curious Even if the heating was on ALL day which it wouldn't be it is £40.32 

[JohnMo]

9 minutes ago, Galvin1972 said:

How do you get to £80 a day? Just curious Even if the heating was on ALL day which it wouldn't be it is £40.32 

 

0.07 (W/m²) x 192 (my house area) x 24 (hrs) x 0.25 (kWh price standard tariff)

 

 

[SteamyTea]

13 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

unconvinced it’s worth the cost to buy

The reason these are sold by snake oil salespeople is because they are very cheap to get manufactured, easy to install, run off an ordinary power outlet, and when on, can give the impression they are effective, compared to no heating.

As @JohnMo shows, they cost a (expletive deleted)ing fortune to run.

 

If they were as good as claimed, then we would have had them for years, not as if electricity is a new thing, or infrared, near or far (700nm to 1mm ish) has just been discovered.

 

The photon energy of infrared is generally accepted to be between 1.7 eV and 1.24 meV.

Visible light, i.e. what we see with our eyes, is between 3.3 eV and 1.7 eV.

As the wavelength gets longer, the intrinsic energy gets less. This is why even small microwave ovens (~23lt) are 900W.

Will have to measure the inside of my new oven to see what the kW/m² works out at.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

Will have to measure the inside of my new oven to see what the kW/m² works out at.

 

My Combination Oven
Width /m	0.30
Depth /m	0.29
Height /m	0.20
Volume /m3	0.02
Area /m2	0.46
		Power.m-3 /kWp.m-3	Power.m-2 /kWp.m-2
Microwave Power /kWp	1.45	83	3.1
Oven Power /kWp	1.7	98	3.7
Grill Power /kWp	1	57	2.2

Edited August 1 by SteamyTea

[saveasteading]

On 11/01/2024 at 17:08, Flossy1234 said:

I'm keen to be eco

It is electric heating so not eco unless from solar.

 

Isn't this simply heating the plaster, so you have  a warm wall? Nice to sit next to but basically electric heating to the room and not benefitting from infra red use in any way?

 

I've got an electric blanket under the tiles in the bathroom. Very cosy underfoot but only for an hour a day in winter and not heating the room much.

[JohnMo]

You could do the same or similar with a wet system I assume, with UFH scheme in the ceiling and then run from heat pump, and you would have pretty effective cooling also.

[SteamyTea]

58 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

not benefitting from infra red use in any way?

Well not quite.

The electromagnetic spectrum can be used as a gauge for temperature.

Above I mentioned the photon energy, photons, or light particles, are really what moves energy about (remember that heat is the old word for energy).

Different atoms and molecules rotate and vibrate in proportion to different frequencies, which once a threshold is reached, causes an electron to totally absorb a photon. After a very short time, that electron will drop down to the previous state, releasing a lower energy photon, Which will find another electron to 'charge' and start the cycle again, but at a lower energy level.

That process happen, at the sub atomic level, to all materials and is how energy is transferred.

We are taught at school that there are 3 types of thermal energy transferred, convection, conductance and radiative. They are all radiative really.

There is a method of energy transferred that is different (in this context) and that is bulk mass movement i.e. pumping something hot to cold, or the reverse. This does not really transfer energy though, just places it in a more convent place for later use.

 

There is lots of nonsense spoken about energy transfer, much of it goes back to simple school science (convection is really about density difference), but it really just comes down to electrons being excited by photons, causing the material to vibrate and rotate, which just a state change (potential to kinetic) and back again (kinetic to potential).

It just happens really fast, at a tiny scale and in vast numbers.

[JamesPa]

4 hours ago, Galvin1972 said:

 But unlike traditional convection heating that simply warms the air, our infrared system heats all surfaces—including the floors—up to 3.5m from the ceiling. This results in longer heat retention and slower heat loss, even when doors or windows are opened.

Sorry but if that is the case then you are heating the fabric just like any other heating and your whole argument (basically that you heat only the person so don't need as much energy to have the same 'feel') falls apart.  

 

This really is a load of tosh, at least in the way you describe it.  Fundamentally (as you have now positioned it) it's resistance electric, end of.

Edited August 1 by JamesPa