Is this being pitched as a new thing? Does it differ at all from those electric 'fires' that were so common when I was young?
i.e. a resistive heater that glows red, typically with a curved metal reflector behind it. My grandfather was a tech enthusiast and had an 'infra red' health lamp from the 1950's.
Being mainly radiant heaters, they will be pretty poor at heating air. They'll heat things things that absorb the radiation, which will include a person sitting in the way, furniture, walls. That will I suppose result in secondary convective heating of the air eventually.
Electric fires went out of fashion, presumably because space heating came in. If you inhabit warm air, you don't need to have your skin heated directly by radiation. My recollection of electric fires is of being hot on the side facing the fire and cold on the other.
If you live in a cold house, maybe one with high ceilings that is difficult and expensive to heat, then maybe they are a good idea. Sit in the line of fire and you will feel warm immediately.
The only places I know that have them now are two of the local community halls. They are big high spaces and can be very cold. Turn on the overhead radiant heaters and you soon feel warm. An hour later people are begging for them to be turned off, ten minutes after that they are muttering about being cold again!
Last edited by: Manatee on Sun 3 Jan 21 at 20:41
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