Infrared heat

[brk-lnt]

Originally Posted by SailinAway

So it seems that there is quite a bit of value in this stored heat, making me lean toward getting an infrared heater.

You're still going to have the problem of the general space being too cold, so when you get up to move, you'll likely feel cold fairly quickly.

Heat is a "thing" (vs. cold, which is not a physical thing, it is just the absence of heat). Objects can store heat, much like wet clothing stores water. You can think of objects storing heat similar to a sponge absorbing water, the outer layer will heat up first, and then the heat will be coducted further into the object and stored. Depending on what the object is made of, it will affect how long it takes that object to absorb heat all the way through, and how long it takes to release it.

If you want to eliminate the cold drafty feeling of a house or room, you need to heat the entire room, and you need to hold that temperature long enough for the objects in the room to stabilize at that temperature. If you blow a little bit of warm air into a room, it will quickly go back to feeling cold, because that little bit of heat ultimately gets evenly distributed to ALL the objects in the room. Again, think of it like water, you're not going to fill a room, or make all the objects in a room wet, with an insufficient quantity of water. Ceramic vs. infrared heaters is like comparing different kinds of buckets, it really doesn't matter much if you don't have enough water to begin with.