I’m trying to practice heating my body, not the whole room. The main problem is cold fingers when using a keyboard. Fingerless gloves are insufficient. So I figured a heat lamp would be ideal for this. And it turns out it’s been done.
I’m nixing that particular device though because the light is not red (thus not good for late night usage). It’s also only sold online and I will only buy local. The linked Beurer heat lamp is a “medical device” intended for humans. It looked suitable for my purpose – then I saw there is a timer with max 15 min. What is that about? Is that for safety or for convenience?
I can imagine 15 min being enough for pain relief but my use case requires keeping my hands warm for hours. Pet stores sell 150 watt IR heat lamps for reptiles just as a standard bulb, thus would go into a desk lamp without a short time limit.
The linked device is 300 watt. That’s good but it has no intensity control. A normal light dimmer on the A/C line would solve that. But I wonder:
- is long-term exposure to IR heat harmful?
- if not, should I be avoiding medical devices and looking in pet shops or restaurant supply shops for IR heat lamps, to avoid the timers?
- are there IR lamps for medical purposes that have longer timers?
Bit nutty… or it could work if the mouse is not needed much→ http://i.stack.imgur.com/bbE42.jpg
Non-lasing infrared sources and class-1 IR lasers are perfectly harmless. The timer is probably there to limit fire hazard when continuous heat isn’t required - and being sold as a “medical device”, that particular scammy device is probably built to pretend delivering a metered medical session or dose of some kind.
Just get a small space heater, because that’s what that thing is.
I just downloaded the manual and skimmed through pages of safety info. This was the only relevant statement about that:
Since they don’t mention a duration of exposure, I get the impression this is just pointing out the obvious for liability purposes in case someone does something foolish.
The 15 min seems to be more about protecting the device itself from over-heating. Which I suppose means it’s not well designed… overly fragile.
And I guess the lack of fan would enable the device itself to take on lots of heat.(edit: sorry, just read that it has a fan… though it could be fragile nonetheless)update: I also see that the bulb lasts 2000 hours. I’ve seen 250 watt bulbs claimed to last 6000 hours for like ~$20. So I guess this thing is garbage.
“Overly prolonged radiation may lead to the skin being burned” is clearly BS.
Unlike ionizing radiation, your body can feel “overly prolonged IR radiation” - aka heat - and get out of the way by reflex. There are exceptions, like intense IR radiation in the eye that doesn’t trigger the pupillary response and will cook your eyeball, but that ain’t it. That’s an el-cheapo quartz heater that, as you say, would probably catch on fire if left on too long.
Unless you’re passed out drunk in front of the device, you can’t possibly burn yourself with it without noticing. And if you are unconscious, 15 minutes is plenty long enough to get burnt really badly.
My sister when she was younger loved sitting in front of the fireplace and warming her back, and burned herself multiple times without noticing. Not saying it’s common, but it’s certainly a possibility.
I wonder if that’s a boiling frog scenario. I’m always tempted to keep increasing the heat in hot tubs after adjusting to temp. I wonder if your sister gradually moved closer as she got acclaimated to the temp.
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Friend, just get one of these awesome thingies!
Thanks for the suggestion. That seems ideal because it’s directional. I could probably mount it to heat the keyboard area without adding any heat to the laptop. I’ll try to find a smaller 250 watt one so I can just heat the keyboard area.
Oh, I didn’t understand that restriction. In that case, get a microwave rice bag, if you have a microwave, and use that on your lap to grab for finger warmth-- maybe sitting in one position too long is the issue.
i don’t have a microwave oven but I appreciate the suggestion.