For 20 years I did everything they told me to do. I added insulation. I changed windows. I bought a more efficient gas boiler. My gas bill went from 150 to 280 euros and my feet were still cold. My kids still wore socks in the living room. The corner behind the sofa still grew black mold every January.
Then I took one radiator off the wall and put a white plate on the ceiling. No pipes. No water. Just a cable. And for the first time I understood what heating is actually supposed to feel like.
Table of Contents:
You Don’t Feel Air Temperature. You Feel Wall Temperature.
They taught us to chase air temperature. 23 degrees air, 24 degrees air. But your body does not have an air thermometer. Your body feels radiation from surfaces around you.
Think about it. In summer you sit in the shade at 30 degrees air and you feel okay. You step into the sun at the same 30 degrees air and you immediately feel burning hot. Same air, different radiation. Or you sit in a tent at night at 20 degrees air under a clear sky and you freeze, because the cold sky sucks your heat out.
Your house is the same. If your walls are 15 degrees cold, they suck heat from your body all day even if air is 24 degrees. You feel cold and you turn up the thermostat. If your walls are 22 degrees warm, they give you heat back and you feel cozy at 20 degrees air.
A radiator can never give you warm walls. It gives you a small spot that is 60 degrees hot and four walls that are 15 degrees cold. The hot air it makes flies to the ceiling in 10 seconds. At the ceiling you have 27 degrees where nobody lives. At the floor where you sit you have 16 degrees. That is why you have hot head, cold feet, dry nose and dust flying everywhere.
A ceiling infrared panel does the opposite. It is invisible sunshine. It does not heat air. It crosses the air without loss and becomes heat only when it hits a solid body. Your floor becomes 23 degrees warm to bare feet. Your walls become 22 degrees warm. Your bed becomes warm before you get in. You are surrounded by warm surfaces that hug you from all sides like a warm tile stove. No draft, no dust circulation, humidity stays at a healthy 50 percent. You feel warm at 20 degrees air because every surface around you is warm.
The 50 Cent Room
With gas you have one brain for the whole house. One boiler must heat everything or nothing. You pay to heat the guest room you did not enter for three months.
With infrared each room is its own house. One 700 watt panel for a 14 square meter room, 2 centimeters thin, 7 kilos, four screws, one plug. One WiFi thermostat per room with its own weekly program in your phone.
My house now lives like this. Living room 21 degrees from 17 to 23 only. Bedroom 19 degrees for sleeping but 22 degrees for 20 minutes before alarm so the floor is warm when I step out barefoot. Office 21 degrees Monday to Friday 9 to 5 only. Guest room 15.5 degrees all winter on anti-mold mode. That guest room costs me 6 cents a day to keep dry and mold free instead of heating it for nothing.
Consumption with smart thermostat: the panel pulses 20 minutes on, 40 minutes off because warm walls keep radiating when it is off. Effective work is 2.5 hours per day. 1.75 kWh per day per room. 0.44 euro per day per room. For the whole winter, one room is about 79 euros. No boiler service 150 euros, no gas meter fixed fee 12 euros per month even when you don’t heat, no chimney, no noise, no risk of gas leak or carbon monoxide, no maintenance for 25 years.
The House That Waits For You
The biggest freedom came with our weekend house on the coast.
In a gas system there is water. Water freezes. So you must keep the house at 12 degrees all winter even when you are not there, or it bursts and floods.
In an infrared system there is no water. No pipes, no boiler, nothing to freeze. You can leave the house at minus 15 degrees for three months completely off.
One hour before you leave home you open the app and tap Living Room 21, Bathroom 24. When you unlock the door, the floor is lukewarm, towels are warm, mirror never fogs. If you forgot to switch off on Sunday, you switch off from the highway.
You can choose white, black glass, mirror that never fogs, or your own family photo printed on it that heats the living room. It is just a beautiful picture that happens to be warm.
Stop paying to heat air that you throw out the window every time you ventilate. Start heating walls, floors and people who stay. Once you live one winter with warm walls, you will never understand how you ever lived with hot air.
