Outdoor heating allows people to stay in substantially unenclosed spaces, when it would otherwise be too cold to do so. To this end, various outdoor heating appliances are available, including gas patio heaters, quartz or ceramic electric lamps, and wood burning chimenea and fire pits.
In an outdoor environment, convection would quickly carry away heat in the form of hot air, so all these methods emit various amounts of their total output as radiant heat. Radiant heat is emitted from the appliance, and is absorbed by objects and people, raising their temperature.
Famous quotes containing the words outdoor and/or heating:
“Close to the academy in this town they have erected a sort of gallows for the pupils to practice on. I thought that they might as well hang at once all who need to go through such exercises in so new a country, where there is nothing to hinder their living an outdoor life. Better omit Blair, and take the air.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means—from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)