[Greenbuilding] infrared heaters

[Ted Inoue]

Someone else recently sent me that EdenPure advert. I replied that there was
a snake in the garden of Eden....

The claims made on that website are, um, stretching the truth and/or
misleading.

"It does not get hot and will not reduce humidity or oxygen like most space
heaters."
How does a heater work if it doesn't get hot? How do you define "hot"
What heaters reduce humidity? Oxygen?

Also, I really question the person in the video. One line: "think of a
combustion heaters, like a hair dryer,....it burns the oxygen and moisture
out of the air....EdenPure works on a totally new and different principle:
the heat exchange process absorbs heat then exhales it into the air where it
bonds with moisture molecules throughout the room "

I have seen other quartz heaters claim to be more efficient. I believe the
basis of some of these claims are that they project focussed IR towards an
occupant. In this respect, the are advantageous, in that much of their
energy is 'aimed' where it will be used, as opposed to simply heating the
entire room. The EdenPure appears different, but it does use the quartz tube
heaters.

It's scary what people can get away with saying....


On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 4:00 PM, Russell, Richard <
Richard.Russell at shawgrp.com> wrote:

> Let's be careful to distinguish between "efficiency" and short-term
> perceived comfort. If either type of heater is within the building
> envelope, then both will be essentially 100% efficient at converting
> electrical energy coming in to heat. The infrared, if designed properly,
> might be better at distributing that heat within the room evenly,
> particularly if the other is a baseboard unit that both radiates heat
> away from the wall where it is mounted and heats up air local to it,
> resulting in some convective transport to other parts of the room.
> Whatever surface faces a radiating source will absorb heat and start to
> warm up. Your skin facing the source will feel warmer, so you might
> conceivably feel warmer at a lower average room temperature, while
> letting other rooms remain at a lower temperature and thus lose less
> heat through the building envelope.
>
> On the other hand, if either type of heater is the sole means of
> replacing heat lost through the building envelope to maintain some
> constant indoor temperature, then both types will use the same amount of
> electric power. Arguably the infrared unit could use more if it radiates
> a lot of energy straight out the windows.
>
> Dick Russell
> -----Original Message-----
> From: greenbuilding-bounces at listserv.repp.org
> [mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Benjamin
> Pratt
> Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 3:33 PM
> Subject: [Greenbuilding] infrared heaters
>
> One of my students was trying to convince me that infrared electric
> heaters are much more efficient than typical electric heat. Without
> researching it, I'm thinking, how can it be more efficient than 99
> percent?
>
> Save me the time of researching it--what do you all think?
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