What is the advantage of an electric infrared heating system?
THE INFRARED ADVANTAGE
Energy efficiency
The hot air rises.
I’m probably not telling you anything here, but hot air tends to rise. That’s why baseboard heaters are installed on the floor, not the ceiling. So, to be comfortable in your living room, you need to heat the entire volume.
What about infrared heating? Believe it or not, an infrared heating system does not heat the air. Indeed, the very principle of radiant heating is to heat the masses rather than the air. In fact, the radiation heats the first mass it touches, then when this mass becomes hot, it gives off heat in turn, which warms the air. Here is an example you know well: the sun. Although the sun is about 150 million km from the Earth, you know that on a summer day, its radiation will melt your ice cream cone. If you are placed in the sun and move to be in the shade, your feeling will be different. However, the air temperature is the same. The difference is therefore in the radiation. The electric infrared heater uses the same principle to provide the user with an enveloping and homogeneous feeling of comfort.
It is this feature that makes infrared heating so effective. What happens when you heat your garage to 20 degrees Celsius with a unit heater and open your big garage door? All the warm air that has built up escapes and your garage quickly becomes uncomfortable. If the user’s garage in this example were instead equipped with an electric infrared heating system, he could very well open his garage door without losing the comfortable feeling he had before opening it. In fact, the rays that come into contact with the user provide an equivalent sensation of warmth before and after the door is opened.