Just Say No to Heat Lamps!

[Beekissed]

So...I'm confused as to just how heat lamps are hard to work with?

I've used one in my outside brooder and merely hang it from the ceiling and place it about 8-10 in. from the floor/bedding. The chicks have the option of sitting under it for warmth or moving out of it's heat to cool off. The way it is set up there is no way it could cause a fire or anything, so why again is this a bad thing?

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

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Its not hard to work with I just don't like how much energy they use. An there safety is relative. Remember dust is flammable especially if it collects on the bulb. We here about several fires on here a year from them.

 

[BlacksheepCardigans]

If all light degraded into heat, an LED on your hand (or in your bedroom) would make it as warm as an incandescent does, if they both produce the same lumens. Lots of light is simply reflected and scattered; it does not become infrared energy unless something happens to change its wavelength, AND if the thing absorbing it is molecularly structured in such a way that absorbing energy creates heat. A wooden slide and a metal slide in the playground in the sunlight - one is cool and one is unbearable. Wood is loosely structured and can absorb the energy without heating up; metal cannot.

What a chick is getting under a heat lamp is radiant heat, not laminar or convection heat. Convection heat is the heat transfer created by movement, which is not how heat lamps work. I have my feet on a heating pad right at this second, and the bottoms of my feet are enjoying the radiant heat from it. The lower part of my legs is enjoying the convection heat from the warmer blood in my feet moving up through my legs. Heat lamps are mainly a radiant source, not a convection source. They don't lose most of their goodness up into the air, because radiant heat has no trouble moving downward.

I also disagree that our job is keeping heat loss down rather than actually heating the chicks - chicks are poikilothermic for a good week at least. We have to actually put heat IN the chick, just like we did when we were incubating them. After that you're trying to give the chick a warm enough environment that they don't get overwhelmed trying to metabolize food for heat, so you could think of it as keeping heat loss down, but the critical first days they are still just "eggs" and they need to be actively heated.

If your lights in a pipe work, that's fantastic, but all you've done is create an electric hen (which is how many of the UK smallholders brood, since they have such limited access to incandescent lights) on her back, with a bit of a plastic heat sink created by the mass of the PVC. You could have made the pipe two inches off the ground and they could have gotten under it and you'd have the same heat relationship. The farmers who use electric hens figure that they need about 70 watts for 25-40 chicks, which is slightly less but not dramatically less than what you'd need for a heat lamp. It's not orders of magnitude more efficient the way you are imagining it to be.

 

[Beekissed]

Gotcha!

I only use a 60 watt bulb in mine and generally only have to use it for 2 wks. so I guess I don't think about energy usage like you folks who breed and sell chicks.

 

[Donner]

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Think of it like a recharge station. If when running around in the cold there body heat drops. By going back an sitting on the pipe they are letting heat renter there down an giving there body time to warm back up. So they get use to cold but are not freezing. Air temp for most of the brooder. Warm air is only directly over the pipe an in there down if they are sitting on it.

Oh, I know it is exactly that, but a heat lamp does the same thing to whatever it is shining on, but with less control.

 

[HorizonSon]

Well; regardless, I like the idea and plan on doing some experimenting will the same/similar design. I intend to make two and keep them spaced about two chicks apart (varying distance as they grow). This should help provide heat as a "roost" as well as a "wall" of heat for them to be between.... I then can put a LED bulb in there above their food and water; or perhaps a lil 25 watt red incandescent.

Once again; thank you for the wonderful idea!

 

[chickenlady81]

rebelcowboysnb I breed Pugs too!

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

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Yes an LED creates a lot of radiant heat How exactly it compares to a regular bulb of the same wattage Im not sure. Most LEDs are very low wattage an all of its energy is pushed out at one wavelength. But if you step in front of a 1000 watt LED panel you would see how much heat an LED can put out. You can cook with it. You can get a lazier pointer which is just a LED that is high wattage in use them to start fires. Google Lazier burners.All light radiation works relatively the same. Just because you can see visible wave lengths an cant see inferred does not give ether magical properties. It all get absorbed by objects an turned in to heat. Yes a heat lamp works on radiant heat but only till that radiant energy hit an object(chicken down). Then it becomes thermal heat which has to conduct down the down in to the chick. Down is a bad conductor so most radiates in to the air an floats away. No I could not put the pipe in the air. It radiates very little heat from the bottom.

For 13 years of my life I was a fireman an my life depended on understanding thermodynamics. Not saying am an expert in it but If I didn't understand the 3 types of heat an how it reacts with warm blooded bodies I don't think I would have lived this long. Radiant heat hits cloth, down, hair yada yada yada an stops. Then its that objects property's to conduct an/or radiate that heat that actually decides how much of that heat gets to the body. Thats why we wear nomex. Its a good insulator an a good radiator. Now down is far from Nomex but it is still a good insulator an an ok radiator. Down Blocks radiant heat. So the chick is heated by conduction an convection off the air, objects an there down that was heated by the radiant heat off the light. Thats where the loss is.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

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OK make with the Pug pictures, lets see them.