My goal is to keep central heating turned off as much as possible. I bundle up indoors, which works for the most part but I will struggle when temps drop low enough. And hands in cold air on a keyboard are still a problem regardless.
What about using an infrared heat lamp, which traditionally has these use cases:
- keeping pet reptiles warm
- farms: livestock and incubators
- physical therapy for humans (the claims: pain relief, skin healing/repair, blood circulation, anti-aging skin, …)
- (atypical) specifically to warm hands on keyboards (but the emitted light is white when red would be better so as to not disturb natural night vision)
The last bullet inspires some enthusiasm. But I am interested in a DiY project on-the-cheap, buying locally not online.
This array of IR LEDs will be hard to buy locally. But the question is, are LEDs even the way to go? That article has a complaint about the LEDs (ironically) having a short life. And a complaint that they do not produce heat anyway. Is that a failure of just that brand and model, or generally a gimick?
The temptation is to go cheap on the bulbs, but this ad for a heat lamp for lambs is convincing to the contrary. They sell bulbs for $21 that last ~4320 hours. These bulbs are claimed to last 6000 hours.
What about carbon heating lamps? They look like the basis of space heaters, which are notoriously ineffecient. Though I wonder if the problem is just that people use space heaters to heat a whole room… when perhaps it’s more sensible to have a quite low setting to just keep hands or feet warm.
If a typical red filiment bulb is used, is it fair to say a simple dimmer would be useful, such as that of this fixture?
Have you already considered a desktop heating pad? It might use less energy but would definitely be easier on the eyes
I tried this. It makes hot sweaty contact points without warming my hands.
That would help when my wrists rest on the cold desk (which is ergonomically bad anyway). It doesn’t seem like a solution for typing, though if I take frequent rests for hand warming maybe that’d be viable (which I do now by via many cups of hot tea).
About the eyes, I would not want to wear goggles. But I wonder if a good lamp shade could be sufficient. Or is the reflected light also retina deteriorating?
I don’t know about the health effects of too much IR radiation but I would find it annoying. My office gets cold too but I’ve been getting by with just sitting on one hand at a time if it gets too bad. If it gets much worse I‘d consider a desktop heating pad with a small blanket over the entire area. That way both my keyboard and mouse areas are kept warm.
Yeah I do the hand sitting and some other tricks… but was looking for a slightly more productive level of comfort without heating the room or house.
The only thing IR does is heat you up, so as long as you’re not shining the light directly in your eyes the reflected radiation should be nowhere near enough to cause eye damage.