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:
“From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a savage’s preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.”
—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)