In 1855 someone invented a cast iron box, filled it with boiling water, and called it heating. We have been improving that box ever since. We made it smaller, we made it aluminum, we added thermostatic valves and fancy apps, but it is still the same mistake: it heats air and hopes that air will somehow heat you.
Air is the worst possible material to store heat. One cubic meter of air stores almost nothing. One cubic meter of brick wall stores a thousand times more. And you already own 100 cubic meters of walls around you. That is a giant free battery. Radiators never use it. Infrared panels use only that.
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How Sunshine Heats In Winter And Radiators Never Will
Go outside on a cold but sunny February day. Air is 5 degrees and freezing. You step from shade into sun and in 10 seconds you feel warm on your face. The air is still 5 degrees. What warmed you is light.
An infrared ceiling panel is that winter sun, inside your house. It is a flat plate, 2 cm thin, 700 watts for a 14 sqm room, that shines with invisible infrared rays. Those rays cross the air without heating it and turn into warmth only when they land on a solid body: your skin, your floor, your sofa, your walls, your bed.
In 60 seconds you feel soft warmth on your skin. In 15 minutes your floor is 23 degrees and you can walk barefoot. In 30 minutes all four walls are 22 degrees. Now your house is not a tent with hot air at the ceiling and ice walls. Your house is a warm cave. All surfaces around you radiate warmth back to you like a warm stone oven. Your body stops losing its own heat to cold walls. That is why you feel perfectly cozy at 20 degrees air with infrared, while you shiver at 24 degrees air with radiators.
And when the walls are warm, they keep heating you for an hour after the panel has switched off. That is why a panel with a smart WiFi thermostat works only 20 minutes per hour. 40 minutes it rests and walls do the job.
Why Your House Has Mold And Your Laundry Never Dries
Open your wardrobe that stands against an outside wall. Smell that musty smell. Look behind it. Black dots. They told you that you don’t ventilate enough. They sold you chemical paint. Mold is not about ventilation. It is about a cold wall.
When you shower, cook, breathe, you make warm humid air at 24 degrees. That air touches an outside wall that is only 14 degrees because your radiator never heated it. The air cools down and drops all its water on that wall, like a cold beer bottle sweating in summer. The wall is wet 24 hours a day. Mold lives on that wet film.
You cannot fix a wet wall by heating air more. More hot air means more water that will condense on the cold wall. You fix it by making the wall warmer than the air. A ceiling infrared panel shines directly on that cold outside wall and keeps it at 21 degrees. Now 24 degree humid air touches a 21 degree wall and nothing happens. No water, no condition for mold. In 90 percent of our installations mold dries out and falls off by itself in three weeks. No bleach, no chemicals. Just physics.
And laundry: hang it one meter in front of a panel. Infrared light hits the wet fabric directly and evaporates water from inside the fibers. Clothes dry in half the time, without a dryer, without that damp cold feeling radiators leave.
The Freedom Of Having No Boiler At All
Look at what you remove when you remove gas. No boiler that breaks on Christmas Eve. No yearly service 150 euros. No gas fixed fee 12 euros a month even when you don’t heat. No chimney sweep. No pipes in walls that can leak. No gas leak risk, no carbon monoxide risk, no noise.
Each room gets its own panel and its own WiFi thermostat with a temperature sensor on your desk, not on a hot radiator. You program a week in two minutes in the app. Living room 21 from 17 to 23, bedroom 19 for sleep and 22 for 20 minutes before wake up so floor is warm when you step out, office only weekdays, guest room 15.5 all winter anti-mold for 6 cents a day.
And your weekend house: there is no water in the system. 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 your phone. When you open the door floor is lukewarm, towels are warm, bathroom mirror never fogs because it is warm.
Consumption: 1.8 to 2.4 kWh per day per room with smart pulsing, about 0.50 euro per day per room. 180 days winter about 90 euro per room for the whole winter. 25 years warranty, silent, maintenance free. Available as white, black glass, mirror, or your family photo printed on it.
We spent 200 years heating air that we throw out the window. It is time to start heating walls, floors and people who stay.
