For the 20 years that we've owned this house, our kitchen has been colder than the rest of the house (Natural Gas, Steam and old cast-iron radiators). My belief is that it is under-represented with radiators because when the system was put in, there was very likely a big stove of some sort in there (you can still see the large circular "patch in the plaster where the duct work must have been). It's typically in the low-50's (!) first thing in the morning and in the low 60s through the day during the winter months.
We keep one of those 120v, 1500-watt tower-type heaters in there, but of course, it's insufficient and it takes so long to start making a difference that it's kind of pointless much of the time. By the time it starts to warm it up, we're done in the kitchen anyway. It's only useful for those days when Joyce is in the mood to cook and is spending 3-4 hours in the kitchen at a time. Joyce has been diagnosed with Lupus and though she doesn't complain, her joints are frequently uncomfortable and being cold doesn't help. She loves cooking but avoids it more and more and the kitchen just isn't comfortable for her. I really want to take care of this, but can't spring a few thousand right now.
I almost picked up a 220v HD workshop heater the other day but the plug was different than the stove outlet I would have plugged it into. My thoughts were that it would heat the room in ten minutes, then it could be unplugged and the regular little tower heater could maintain the temp. I didn't feel confident in replacing the plug when dealing with a unit like a 220v heater.
We've considered a stove (originally pellet, but then I was convinced that NG would be cleaner and easier since we had NG in the house anyway), but there's still too many issues: Space, venting, cost.
I had also considered putting one in the basement below the kitchen, adding some heat to my workshop and hopefully adding quite a bit through registers I would cut into the kitchen floor...not to mention some radiant heat through the floor itself. This could be less expensive because it wouldn't have to be pretty like the one in the kitchen should be.
When I was checking into that 220v workshop heater, I kept coming across far infrared heaters such as the EdenPure heaters.... there's a whole bunch of brands that all look the same and get only "somewhat good" reviews.
This weekend, while watching the HomeTime home-improvement program, I saw that they were using far infrared wall-mounted panels as the only source of heat in a garage/studio building:
Clip from show here. I Googled a bit and came up with
this manufacturer.
I like the fact that a larger panel mounted on the ceiling of the main part of the kitchen and a smaller panel ceiling-mounted in the pantry (it's an odd-shaped room), on a timer- thermostat to come on when we wake up, could be ideal supplemental heat.
Does anyone have any experience with these or have any other ideas to offer?
