Your thermostat says 22 degrees. Your feet say 16. Your feet are right. We spent 100 years measuring air. Your body does not feel air. Your body feels radiation from surfaces around you. Put your palm on the outside wall in January. It is 14 degrees. Ice. That wall sucks 100 watts of heat out of your body all day. You can heat air to 24 and you will still feel cold because that wall is still 14. That is why you have hot head and cold feet. That is why your daughter plays on a floor that is 16 degrees even when air is 22.
Air is the worst battery for heat ever invented. One cubic meter of air stores 0.34 watt-hours. One cubic meter of brick stores 500 watt-hours. Your house is already a giant free battery made of 100 cubic meters of walls and floors. A radiator never charges that battery. It heats air that flies to the ceiling in 10 seconds and is thrown out the window 5 minutes later.
Heating With Light, Not With Air
An infrared ceiling panel https://topirpaneli.si/ does not heat air at all. It is a white plate, 2 cm thin, 60 by 120 cm, 700 watts for a 14 square meter room, 7 kilos, four screws, one cable, 15 minutes to install. No water, no pipes, no boiler, no noise, no maintenance for 25 years.
When it is on it shines with invisible infrared light, exactly like February sun through a window that warms your face even though air outside is minus 5. That light crosses air without any loss and becomes heat only when it hits something solid. In 60 seconds you feel soft warmth on your skin like sitting by a fireplace. In 15 minutes your floor goes from 16 degree ice to 23 degree lukewarm and you walk barefoot. In 30 minutes your walls go from 14 to 22 degrees warm. Your bed is warm before you get in. Now you live inside warm surfaces that give you heat back from all sides like a warm tile stove. Your body stops losing its own heat to cold walls. You feel perfectly cozy at 20 degrees air while with radiators you needed 24. Those two degrees difference is 14 percent less energy every single day all winter. Open a window for 10 minutes. With radiators you lose all heat and need an hour to reheat. With infrared you throw out air but heat stays in floor and walls. Close the window and in 3 minutes air is warm again because walls warm it instantly.
The End Of Mold, Dust And Dry Winter Air
Radiators heat by moving air in a loop. Cold air to radiator, hot air to ceiling, cold air down along outside wall back to radiator. That loop never stops. It lifts dust from floor, burns it on 60 degree metal, that is that dry winter smell, and throws it into your nose. Humidity drops to 30 percent, throat scratches, skin itches.
Infrared has no air movement. No draft, no dust flying, no burning smell. Humidity stays at healthy 50 percent. No dry throat in morning.
And mold ends by itself. Mold does not come from bad ventilation. It comes from a cold wall. When warm humid air from shower, cooking and breathing touches a 14 degree outside wall it drops water like a cold beer bottle sweating in summer. That wall is wet 24 hours a day and mold lives on that wet film. You can bleach it ten times, it comes back because wall stays cold. A ceiling infrared panel shines directly on that outside wall and keeps it at 21 degrees. Now 24 degree humid air touches 21 degree wall and nothing happens. No water, no condition for mold. It is physically impossible for condensation to form on a warmer surface. In 90 percent of our installations black dots behind wardrobes and on bathroom ceilings dry out and fall off by themselves in three weeks. No chemicals. Just a warm wall.
One Room Is One House
With gas you have one brain for the whole house. You must heat everything or nothing. You heat guest room for three months for nobody. You pay gas fixed fee 12 euros a month even when you do not heat, plus boiler service 150 euros every year, plus chimney.
With infrared https://infrardecipaneli.si/ each room is its own house. One panel, one WiFi thermostat with small sensor you put on your desk where you actually sit, not on hot radiator, one app on your phone. Living room 21 degrees from 17 to 23 only. Bedroom 19 for sleeping and 22 for 20 minutes before alarm so floor is warm when you step barefoot. Kids room 21 from 14 to 20. Office weekdays only. Guest room 15.5 all winter anti mold mode for 6 cents a day. Weekend house on coast has no water inside so nothing can freeze and burst. You can leave it at minus 15 for three months completely off. One hour before arrival you tap ON on phone. You arrive to warm floors, warm towels and bathroom mirror that never fogs because it is warm.
Thermostat pulses 20 minutes on, 40 minutes off because warm walls keep radiating when off. Effective work is 2.5 hours per day, 1.75 kWh per day per room, 0.44 euro per day per room, whole winter per room about 79 euros. No boiler service, no gas meter fee, no chimney, no risk of gas leak or carbon monoxide, silent, 25 year warranty. Available as white, black glass, mirror that never fogs, or your family photo printed on it that heats the living room.
We spent a hundred years heating air that lives at the ceiling. It is time to start heating walls, floors and people who stay.