Posted: August 18th, 2011 | Author: Mirage Infrared Heaters
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released their monthly Consumer Price Index report today…and the news isn’t good for those looking to heat their homes this winter.
Energy prices rose 2.8% month-over-month. That increase takes into account the gas we put in our cars, but also the heating oil, propane, natural gas and other heating fuels we use to keep our homes warm. However, the long term trend in energy prices is much, much worse.
Year-over-year, from July 2010 to July 2011, energy prices have soared 19%. It’s getting more and more expensive for all of us to heat our homes, and the forecasted trend in prices only points upward.
Is it time for you to move to Plan B when it comes to keeping your residence warm this winter? What is Plan B for heating? Infrared Heaters.
Quartz infrared heaters are so much more energy efficient than old-fashioned forced heating systems, baseboard systems, and other conventional heating system, that it’s truly staggering. And the less you use these inefficient solutions and turn to portable infrared heaters instead, the more you save.
One of the main reasons infrared heaters are so much more efficient is the way they heat. Old-fashioned systems pump dried, warm air into your rooms, while infrared heaters warm the objects in the room, which capture and release the warmth into the air evenly; from wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling.
Posted: August 12th, 2011 | Author: Mirage Infrared Heaters
Now, I realize that the next innovation in our series on the features and benefits of Comfort Furnace technology might not sound that sexy to the ear…but it will feel good on your skin! I’m talking about the Comfort Furnace’s stainless steel diffusion coil.
The heat produced by the quartz infrared heating elements needs to be diffused in order to deliver the highest quality warmth possible. That’s the task of a diffusion coil. But if your infrared heater has diffusion coils that are made from sub-par materials — or are designed poorly — then the effectiveness of the unit will suffer greatly. And that lowered effectiveness is substantial!
For instance, when we tested the stainless steel diffusion coils used by the Comfort Furnace and compared the dispersion of heat with other brands…the results were stunning. The Comfort Furnace was a full 25% more effective in dispersing infrared heat. The reason: the use of stainless steel coupled with a superior design.
The competition doesn’t use stainless steel diffusion coils. Only the Comfort Furnace and Heat-A-Lot utilizes stainless steel diffusion coils. Uglier still, some of the competitions’ models don’t even have diffusion coils. Unbelievable!
The benefits of this technology even go beyond effectiveness. In fact, the life span of the Comfort Furnace is greatly expanded because of it. What is the estimated life span of these infrared heaters? It’s an incredible 15 to 20 years!
“You can’t judge a book by it’s cover,” they say. But in this case, our portable heating systems operate as good on the inside as they look on the outside. But don’t be fooled by other units that look slick, without knowing what really makes them tick.
Posted: August 11th, 2011 | Author: Mirage Infrared Heaters
You’d think that with all the devastating financial news circulating lately, including the market crashing after U.S. debt was downgraded, that heating fuel prices would drop. That’s because, during economically difficult periods throughout our nation’s history, demand for heating oil, natural gas, propane and other heating fuels usually went done. People just didn’t have the money to buy as much of these expensive commodities to heat their homes.
But according to the Department of Energy’s weekly stockpile report, it’s not the case this time.
Despite the sour news about the economy, the DOE says that U.S. fuel demand may not be weakening at all. In fact, demand is rising! And with rising demand comes rises fuel prices. So on Wednesday, after the report was issued, the average price for heating oil in the Northeast jumped 10 more cents. It’s expected to continue to rise through the winter months.
The prices of our quartz infrared heaters, on the other hand, did not rise…and they won’t. And our infrared heaters do not use heating fuels, so you don’t have to worry about when to buy to get the best price for heating. Simply put, the less you use these expensive commodities and the more you use a Comfort Furnace or Heat-A-Lot infrared heater smartly and effectively, the more money you’ll save this winter.
Posted: August 5th, 2011 | Author: Mirage Infrared Heaters
In this latest exploration into the technology of the Comfort Furnace Infrared Heater, we’re going to cover one of the most surprising benefits and features of them all. Namely, that the Comfort Furnace UV models are not only infrared heaters…but also air purifiers!
The Comfort Furnace UV employs Philips Ultraviolet Bulbs, which purify the air which passes through the unit. And when we say purifies, we’re talking about the nasty stuff: bacteria, mold, mildew, viruses and other airborne contaminants. These pathogens are stripped from the air which wafts out of the Comfort Furnace, meaning your family stays warm and healthy.
The Heat-A-Lot and Comfort Furnace XL also strip the air of harmful pathogens, but do so by sanitizing the air you breathe.
The health benefits of the Comfort Furnace are many, and we’ll dive into the others in future posts. But the fact that these infrared heaters remove pathogens like viruses at the height of cold and flu season — exactly when you’ll be using them to warm your rooms — may be the greatest of the health benefits.
Despite the benefits of using ultraviolet light, competitors of the Comfort Furnace don’t take advantage of the technology. The bulbs we use are of the highest quality (a product patented by Philips) and completely safe when used in a heating application.
And consider this health benefit when compared to burning heating oil, natural gas or propane to stay warm. With these conventional forms of heating, there are healthy-air dangers to consider — instead of advantages. With old-fashioned space heaters, there are no advantages and fire dangers to consider. Taking all this into account, there really is no comparison.
So if you’re looking to purchase an air purifier and an infrared heater, it just makes sense to go with the Comfort Furnace UV. Even if you hadn’t been considering an air purification system like the Comfort Furnace, by opting for the UV model, you’ll get two separate units for the price of just one!
Posted: August 4th, 2011 | Author: Mirage Infrared Heaters
This post is the third in our series about the technology features of the Comfort Furnace. Today we will highlight the advantages and benefits of a portable heating solution that utilizes quartz infrared heating technology.
Effectiveness, durability, safety, and energy efficiency are but a few of the qualities associated with quartz infrared heating systems. These products offer convection-like warmth, so that the Comfort Furnace warms your home and your body in a very similar way to how the sun warms the planet and its human inhabitants.
It’s not only that this unit affects the air temperature of your rooms, but that it heats the objects in the room first, which as a consequence warms the air. The warmth that is held and released by the room’s objects provide what is commonly referred to as “soft-heat.” This way of heating your spaces is precisely why the Comfort Furnace Infrared Heater warms your rooms from wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling.
All heat is not the same! You know how it feels when you open a hot oven…you really can’t call it “pleasantly” hot. But what about the sun touching your skin? Now that is what you could call pleasant. It’s the same difference you’ll notice between portable, quartz infrared heaters and traditional space heaters. It’s a difference you can absolutely feel with your own body.
The safety differences between conventional space heaters and Comfort Furnace Infrared Heaters are even more obvious. While space heating is synonymous with fires, the heating elements of the Comfort Furnace cannot spark a fire, because we’ve placed them in fireproof containments. Now that is peace of mind that goes way beyond the effectiveness and longevity of the unit!
Speaking of longevity, the elements of the Comfort Furnace are truly exceptional, boasting a minimum lifespan of 20,000 hours. Many of our customers have reported that their heating elements have lasted up to thirty thousand hours!
All of these advantages can also be had with the Heat-A-Lot, a quartz infrared heating system as well.
If you add to these qualities the fact that the Comfort Furnace Infrared Heater costs less than a coffee machine to run, then you’ll see just how advantageous these extraordinary portable machines could be for you, your family and your budget.
Posted: August 3rd, 2011 | Author: Mirage Infrared Heaters
You already know that the time to start preparing your home for winter isn’t when cold weather is at your door step. The time to prepare is now. In this post, we’re going to show you how you can combat the high prices of heating oil…in just six steps!
Step 1. Seal Off The Drafts
One of the biggest heat (and money) wasters is caused by leaks in your windows and doors. The rememdy is simple: find those leaks and stop them up with caulking or weather-stripping. We’d recommend a tried and true way of identifying leaks. Try the incense test.
Fir
st, carefully hold a lit stick of incense up to joints. When you see the smoke waver, you know that you have a leak.
A less sophisticated way of keeping the heat where you want work wonders as well. If you have an infrared heater in the bedroom, you may want to keep it there. Simply place a rolled bath towel across the bottom of the door. You can even use this trick to keep the cold air outside…well, outside. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, reducing drafts can cut heating energy usage by 5% to 30%!
And one last easy solution: work those windows, curtains and blinds. Whenever you need extra warmth, open them and let the sun’s rays do the heating for free. When the sun isn’t shining, close them so that they will help insulate your home from the cold.
All of these actions will help you get the most out of your portable, quart infrared heater.
Step 2. Turn The Thermostat Lower
This is one of the great benefits of owning an infrared heater. You can turn your thermostat way down and stay warm with your Comfort Furnace or Heat-A-Lot nearby. The math is simple, and we hear of the benefits from our customers year after year. Basically, the lower you set your thermostat, the more heating dollars you’ll save. In fact, for every degree you lower the dial, you’ll save between 1% to 3% on your heating bill!
Step 3. Use A Programmable Thermostat
A programmable thermostat will make your life easier, and cut down on the excessive use of heating oil. It allows much finer control over where the heating is set, and doesn’t forget to to turn down the heat at night. In doing so, the average household can save – at least – $150 a year according to the EPA.
If you use this in conjunction with the temperature sync function of the Comfort Furnace, you can extended the dollars you save by using a programmable thermostat.
Step 4. Keep Your Vents Unblocked And Clean
Check your vents, and if they’re grimy, use some “elbow grease” to clean them. If they are dusty, grab a vacuum to get the job done.
Another way your vents can help you save on heating oil costs is my closing them in rooms you don’t usually use. That way, you’re blocking out the cold and keeping the heat where you want it. If you live in a severely cold climate, make sure the blocked off rooms don’t get cold enough to freeze pipes!
Step 5. Get an Energy Audit
A powerful way to discover where you’re losing heating money is by performing an energy audit of your residence. A professional auditing service will use advanced equipment like infrared imaging and air-pressure systems. Or, you can do it yourself.
This brings us back to an earlier step, because to do it yourself, you’ll need to do a step-by-step inspection of your home. Search for leaks and gauge the effectiveness of you insulation. Find out how fast snow melts off your roof in comparison to the neighbors. The faster snow melts from your roof in comparison, the more insulation you could probably use.
Step 6: Use An Infrared Heater
Of course, we think this is the most important step. And speaking objectively, it is the biggest saver when it comes to heating energy costs. You can read other posts in this blog to find out reasons why, or visit the main site to read about all the benefits and advantages of owning an infrared heater.
Posted: August 2nd, 2011 | Author: Mirage Infrared Heaters
In the second post in the series about the features and benefits of the Comfort Furnace Infrared Heater, we’ll jump right into the nitty-gritty. The first feature we’ll highlight might make for a short-but-oh-so-sweet post, but the feature itself is anything but unimportant when it comes to portable, quartz heaters. What we’re getting at is the Comfort Furnace’s extremely accurate thermostat with digital display.
All Comfort Furnace models are shipped with an exceptionally precise thermostat. The main cause for this model’s thermostat accuracy is that it’s actually controlled by a microprocessor. Now that’s high-tech stuff! But exactly how accurate is the thermostat? We’re talking within one degree of the actual mean temperature of the room it’s located in. A single degree!
Other so-called infrared heaters in the marketplace don’t even come equipped with a thermostat. How in the world can that be? The units I’m talking about (which shall remain nameless) are equipped with…an off/on switch. As you can just imagine, they cost less than the Comfort Furnace. That’s right when the expression “you get what you pay for” comes in handy. While the Comfort Furnace will regulate it’s own operation, the others will simply keep on running until they burn out or you shut them off. Unfortunately, we mean that literally.
The thermostat on the Comfort Furnace is paired with a substantial, easily-read, digital temperature display. You can choose to show the thermostat’s reading in either fahrenheit or celsius. It’s completely up to your preference…and possibly your geographic location! You may make this adjustment with a couple of simple presses of buttons on the front of the Comfort Furnace’s cabinet.
The thermostat on the Heat-A-Lot Infrared Heater is likewise accurate, just in case you were wondering…
Now, all that remains for you to do is to kick back, relax, and let your portable, quartz infrared heater do its job of keeping the spaces in your home, garage, or office, toasty warm.
Posted: August 1st, 2011 | Author: Mirage Infrared Heaters
This post is the first of a series of articles that will highlight the features (not to mention the benefits) you’ll enjoy with Comfort Furnace Infrared Heater technology . In this post, we’ll sketch the key technological attributes of this portable, quartz heater, which we’ll plunge into in more detail in coming posts.
One thing you will realize immediately about the Comfort Furnace is that it comes complete with advanced technology that you can not only just see — but more importantly — that you can hear with your ears and feel with your body. You’ll hear the difference between this unit and an ordinary space heater, because this product operates at virtual silence. And the infrared heat it emits is so much more effective (from an energy usage point of view) as well as in the way it goes about warming your home, garage, office or spaces. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s keep to the task at hand; the technology features packed into this magnificent machine.
The Comfort Furnace Infrared Heater boasts a highly-accurate, onboard thermostat. It is so exacting, that it can measure the temperature inside the room within a single degree of accuracy! Why is it so accurate? It’s so accurate because it’s controlled by a microprocessor. It’s paired with a digital temperature display that’s easy to read — even from across the room.
Second of all, it’s a quartz infrared heating system that utilizes four quartz heating elements. We will go further into those details in a later article. For now, we’ll say that quartz technology makes this portable heater more inexpensive to run and plainly more effective when you compare it with other portable models.
Thirdly, the Comfort Furnace is not only an infrared heater, it’s also an air purifier. The air that passes through the unit is purified of virus, mold, bacteria and other airborne pathogens that make you and your family sick. This is important since you’ll be using your Comfort Furnace during the height of cold and flu season. We owe this air cleaning power to the Philips UV bulbs that it comes with.
In the fourth edition to the series we’ll address benefits of the Comfort Furnace’s stainless steel diffusion coil. A diffusion coil of stainless steel might not sound that exciting, but It improves the estimated lifetime of the heater (it’s 20 years, by the way!) in addition to diffusing the heat it produces in a more efficient manner than its conventional heating competition on the market today.
In the fifth: its the heating chamber lined with copper. Everyone knows how valuable copper is these days. Though by utilizing a copper-lined heating chamber, the infrared energy created is much better converted to heat. Not just that, the copper also boosts the amount of negative ions produced. As you’ll discover, negative ions are great benefit to you health!
Feature number six addresses the longevity of the heating elements this unit employs. They’re so long-lasting in fact, that they carry a minimum lifespan of twenty thousand hours. That a two and four zeros!
The seventh technological feature that make the Comfort Furnace Infrared Heater user-friendly is the full function remote control it comes with out-of-the-box. Just think…you can kick back after a long day’s work, turn on some television and control your quartz infrared heater from the comfort of your couch. Sounds good!
The final feature we’ll cover is the temperature sync feature. This enables you to operate the unit in partnership with your central heating system. Rather than working against you central heating, the Comfort Furnace will work with it.
By the way, the technology features of the Heat-A-Lot Infrared Furnace are very much the same, which you can read about via the link.
Well, that’s the quick look into the technology you can expect and trust. Until then…
Energy prices rose 2.8% month-over-month. That increase takes into account the gas we put in our cars, but also the heating oil, propane, natural gas and other heating fuels we use to keep our homes warm. However, the long term trend in energy prices is much, much worse.
