Your Guide to Infrared Outdoor Patio Heaters

7 minute read | Heaters

When it comes to enjoying the beautiful Summer weather, there’s no better place to do it than on your front or back yard patio. In the early Spring, we get eager to feel the sunshine, and we tend to head out into imperfect weather prematurely. Then sometime in the Fall, when the weather starts to change again, we try to hang on to that sweet summer sunshine and end up braving some unpleasantly rainy or cold weather.

Either way, the best way to get the most from the outdoors is by making our front and backyard patios as comfortable as possible as they can be. With an outdoor electric, natural gas, or propane heater for the patio, you can enjoy blue skies, dramatic clouds, sunshine, and starlight longer. There’s no reason why you can’t effectively extend the good times of the season and linger long into the cool summer nights with your infrared patio heater. 

The Basics of Infrared Patio Heating

All outdoor patio heaters use infrared waves to heat the whole area evenly and reliably regardless of the type of fuel they use. They do differ in size, shape, style, fuel type, and mounting type. The two basic infrared heater shapes:

  • Mushroom-shaped: which are circular and deliver heat in a 360 arc around the heater
  • Box shapes: which project heat in one conical direction

The tall, mushroom-shaped heaters are excellent for placing centrally in an outdoor area. Box heaters come in a wider range of shapes and styles since they should be placed somewhere along the perimeter of the area to be heated to be directed toward an optimal heating zone. 

When it comes to your outdoor heater mounting options, you have a lot of selection to choose from. In most situations, a mushroom heater is best placed on top of a pole, and a box heater is usually best suspended from the ceiling of overhead beams. However, every home and use need is different. Therefore you can rest assured that you will have plenty of mounting and positioning options available to suit your needs. 

The three fuel types for any infrared heater are all very ecologically friendly and cost-effective since infrared heat is always inexpensive to produce and effective because they heat people and objects not the ambient air. Your preference will depend on what energy sources are easiest for you to obtain and use, and which are most readily available in your location. 

Reasons to Choose a Liquid Propane Outdoor Portable Heater

Portable LP heaters are ideal for households where portability is at a premium. Because LP heaters run on self-contained LP canisters for fuel, they do not have to be plugged into a wall or to a natural gas line. 

This makes an LP heater a great option for expanding your existing outdoor heating capabilities when you already own one or more electric or natural gas heater/s. You can enjoy your heated patio using an electric or natural gas heater and ensure your party stays warm. Meanwhile, you have the option to grill in a separate area or heat other activities at the same time. The mobility option also gives you more ways to store your LP heater to protect it from the elements. 

LP heaters are always mounted on a pole, which means they are easy to use in just about any location. It also means that they are easy to store. Because they are portable and easy to put away is you choose to do so, portable heaters have the potential to last for many years with very little maintenance. 

Natural Gas Heaters

Natural gas heaters are known as the workhorses of the infrared heating world. Because most locations in North America have ready built-in access to natural gas, a natural gas-powered heater is a natural place to start building out your outdoor heating system. 

An outdoor natural gas heater never needs to be refilled because it can tap directly into a natural gas utility line. That means you never have to go out and buy a fuel tank and swap it out with the empty fuel tank. Just turn on your natural gas heater and enjoy the warmth any time you like. 

Natural gas heaters can be mounted on poles or wall or suspended from a ceiling or an outdoor structure, and they come in both box-shaped and mushroom-shaped varieties. Best of all, they are effortless to activate. Simply turn the dial or flip the switch and enjoy the heat.

Electric Heaters

Electric heaters are among the most popular infrared heaters due to the simple fact that more people are most comfortable using electric power. All infrared heaters, regardless of the fuel source they use, are reliable, powerful, and efficient.

For all practical purposes, electric heaters are very similar in form and function to natural gas heaters due to the fact that they are always plugged into their source of power. They always come in the box-shaped variety, which makes them another good choice when you’re just starting out building your outdoor heating capabilities.

Electric heaters can be mounted pointing downward from a ceiling or angled downward from a wall mount. With a flush-mounting kit, they can be installed so that they are embedded in the wall or ceiling and are flush with the surface. This is a great way to ensure that your heater will never be in the way of your home or patio decor.

Where electric infrared heaters stand out from the rest is in their sophisticated control systems. The output of an electric heater managed via simple on/off switches or a heat regulator dial. If you would like even more convenient control over the heat settings, complex universal control panels can control multiple heaters independently. You can set the heat output level and operation schedule of multiple heaters using a universal control panel. 

What’s more, your electric heating units can be integrated with smart home systems like Google Nest, the Samsung SmartThings Hub, the Amazon Alexa, and more. These types of systems will give you a lot of control over your heaters, generally from an app on your phone.



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