The Glory of Outdoor Gas Heaters

david — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:15:30 +0000

I’m going to talk right away about outdoor gas heaters because frankly they are my favorite. There is nothing like sitting out on your patio in the evening and, just as the breeze starts to kick up and the temperature begins to drop, not having to move indoors but instead firing up your outdoor heater and letting its warmth envelope you. To me, it is the pincale of modern technology. Ok, that might be a bit of hyperbole there, but the point remains: I adore my outdoor heater. I call it ‘The Sun’ which really isn’t too far from the truth since it works on the same principle, though at a somewhat smaller scale. First a bit about how they work. Heaters generally work by either convection or radiation. Any sort of heat that relies upon heating the air up and then blowing that air over whatever you want to be warm is called convection heating. Lots of indoor central heating systems work on this principle. Radiant heat, on the other hand, heats objects directly and doesn’t require any air to move between the heat source and the heated object. They rely upon infrared light to transfer the energy that does the heating. Remember how I said that these heaters work on the same principle as the sun? Well as you may have heard, there is no air up there in outer space so in order for the sun to warm the earth it needs to do it through radiation. Radiant heaters are ideal for outdoor applications because of the wind. If they relied upon heating the air to warm things and people, even a slight breeze could blow all of the heat away before it was ever felt. No matter how windy it is out, though, you can feel the heat from a radiant heater quite well when you are near it (though of course a strong wind will in its own right cause you to be colder). Patio gas heaters can run on either propane or natural gas and come in a variety of sizes and installation options (ultra portable to permanent installation). We’ll talk more about them in a later post!

Gas Heaters Guide » outdoor propane heaters

The Glory of Outdoor Gas Heaters