How to Heat Your Sunroom
Radiant heating has been around for a long time, it works like the sun. Solar rays heat the ground, objects and people. A radiant heater in your home warms the floor, furniture and people. The stored heat is released evenly back into the room.
Far infrared radiant heating in your sunroom has many beneficial properties: efficiency, quiet, no moving parts, no dust blown around by fans and reduced humidity. Far infrared heating is used in many therapeutic medical devices and as a basement heater, it is claimed to reduce or eliminate mould. Of particular relevance for sunrooms is that the unique properties of far infrared heat can reduce or eliminate condensation.
Not All Radiant Heaters Are The Same
The type of infrared heater is important, far infrared heaters heat objects, not the air. They produce invisible light and do not get very hot (typically a max. temperature of 100 C). On the other hand, “near infrared ” heaters use a heat source that is hot enough to cause a fire (you can see the heat source glowing red), they heat the air, they can cause skin and eye damage, and they lack the unique benefits of true ” far infrared ” heating.
When many of us think about radiant heat, we think about those portable heaters you can buy at the hardware store or stadium heaters with glowing red coils and protective metal grid.
F ar Infrared Radiant Heaters
But what if you could have a radiant heater that was safe, had no glowing metal coils, could be mounted flush to the wall or ceiling at only 1″ thick, and be more efficient? Welcome to far infrared heating panels !
The panels are available in 120V and 240V. They can be hardwired to a suitable thermostat, but use a qualified electrician. For convenience you can order a thermostat that plugs right into your wall. This thermostat has a built-in receptacle, so all you need to do is plug in your 120V far infrared heating panel.
The panels used in sunrooms are typically 24″ x 48″ and 42″ x 42″. To determine how many panels you need use the general rule of dividing the square footage of the sunroom by the wattage of the panel and multiply by 10. Lets take the example of a 12×12 sunroom using the 24″ x 48″ heating panel which is rated at 750 watts:
144sf / 750watts X 10 = 1.92
Therefore 2 panels are required.
When warming a room in your home, the data shows that wall mounted panels have slightly reduced efficiency compared to ceiling mount. When used in a sunroom the effect would be even worse since a wall mounted panel would be most likely pointed at a glass wall which can not store the heat. So the best placement in a sunroom would be the ceiling. This will give maximum heating to the floor and furniture so they can release heat back into the sunroom. Obviously we can’t count on the glass walls in the sunroom to store radiant heat but you will be pleased to know that of the stored heat released back into the room only a small amount leaks out through the glass. And since the glass panes are being warmed by radiant heat, any condensation you are experiencing could be eliminated (condensation is subject to many factors).
Contact Craft-Bilt about our line of far infrared heaters for your sunroom.
By Bart Bremmers