Patio Heaters burn natural gas to produce heat to keep your garden (or pub garden) warm as the sun goes down.

In my experience they heat the air at head height enormously efficiently, but failed to provide much warmth elsewhere. They are also almost always very ugly.

I propose the Lava Lamp Patio Heater.

This unit contains the same gas burner, but it is now situated at knee level. Above this is the lava lamp, now beautifully heated by the gas burner below.

This elegant unit radiates heat from the lava tube, provides a mesmorising garden feature and warms more efficiently - the burner at knee level creates the same heat, but the heated air rises towards the guests, rather than be lost to the midnight dark.
-- jonthegeologist, Jun 04 2004

The Patio Heater http://patioheaters4u.com/
... ugly, ugly looking things. [jonthegeologist, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

The Lava Lamp http://www.lavaworld.com/
The shape of cool - apparently. [jonthegeologist, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Nice. +
-- hazel, Jun 04 2004


(I think you're biased... ; )) +
-- k_sra, Jun 04 2004


Good!

Bueno!

Ist gut!
-- DesertFox, Jun 04 2004


[brau] all heat rises doesn't it? Cheers for the bun.
-- jonthegeologist, Jun 06 2004


Bun for the "Cheers for the bun." Oh and I like the idea, too.
-- yabba do yabba dabba, Jun 08 2004


as far as I know, this kind of devices don't really heat the air, they heat anything that gets in the way of the radiation (infrared radiation) they emit. since air absorbs little (almost none) of that radiation, it doesn't warm up. so what you get by using this lava-lamp is heated knees instead of heated head (as silly as it sounds). you could have lowered your head when you felt too much heat, but you can't rise your knees..

that's just freaky..
-- sweet, Jun 08 2004


It won't work, because of what [sweet] said. It's futile to try to heat people outdoors by heating the air. You need radiant heating, and for that to be remotely efficient you need high temperatures (red hot at least).

Lowering the heaters (perhaps to waist height) probably would help, though, because more of the radiant energy would be intercepted by people, rather than lost to space.
-- spidermother, Jul 20 2012



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