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
Reptiles are cold blooded and depend more on the ambient heat for thermal regulation than humans do. They’re better suited and adapted to continuous exposure to external heat (within limits of course). But also reptiles can’t sue.
Humans are warm blooded and our skin gets damaged when over exposed to heat. We also do stupid things like fall asleep sitting under a heat lamp, so increasing the risk of real damage.
So part of it will be the difference between the species and uses, and the larger part will likely be liability and risk of burns due to over long sessions. That includes liability around health damage and maybe also fire damage if electronics like that fail as others have mentioned.