help with creating heat

Maybe this is too difficult to do when you are practicing in your living room, but in case you have a chance to insulate a tiny room, that will really help you.
It is really worthwhile to insulate the walls, floor and especially the ceiling of your yoga room. I just moved to another house and can only get to 27 degrees with a heater of 2400 Watts. In our former house it used to be the same. But a year ago, we insulated the ceiling first (you will have the biggest losses there because hot air is going up) and immediately saw an increase in temperature of a few degrees. When the whole room was insulated (windows etc covered as well), we easily reached a temperature of 40 degrees within 15 minutes with the same heater! When we would enter the room, we used to put it at 1200 Watts. I think the insulation will pay for itself as you will use less energy. We used polystyrene and that worked really well; that is also a solution that is not too expensive. In this new house, we are planning to use rock wool, spend a bit more money and cover the existing wall and insulation as well.
If you insulate the room very well don’t forget to make sure you have enough ventilation. We installed a small bathroom fan through one of the windows. We also already had a device that can automatically switch a heater or fan on or off when the humidity and/or temperature is too high. It functioned well in the yoga room. In the next couple of weeks we are going to prepare our new yoga room, I am already looking forward to it. The heat really makes a difference!
But when you are practicing in your living room, it is probably difficult (or costly) to insulate everything in a way that is also nice. Do you have another small room or garage or store where you could practice? It may be easier to insulate.

And don’t forget to wear warmer clothes when it is not so hot. That helps as well a bit.

We also have problems with a relative humidity that is extremely low here. I found a humidifier of ‘Bionaire’ that can also give a warm mist. You can go to their website, I found it in South America, but I suppose it will be available elswewhere as well. Maybe that is a useful solution for you as well?

I think you do not necessarily need a heater bigger than 1500 Watts. It all depends on the size of the room you want to heat, but even much more on the insulation! When I heated up our (extremely well insulated) room of around 12-14 square meters with a 2400 Watt heater for 15 minutes and then went back to 1200 Watts, I could easily keep the temperature around 39 degrees Celsius. I could also reach that temperature with heating the room with 1200 Watts for about 30 minutes (and kept it like that for 2 hours). I would even have to switch if off completely sometimes. I only want to say: it really helps to insulate the room well! You will save a lot of money on electricity bills and personally I think it is also better in terms of using energy in an efficient way.

Another great way to retain heat is through a ceiling fan. As we all know, hot air rises, so a ceiling fan can keep it held inside the lower parts of the room.

Hi Simone

Your best efforts to insulate the room will pay off immediately.

There are films to place on windows. But I imagine you could go for a clear thick plastic that would be like a blind or curtain that would seal the window well and also if possible leave a air space (even if small) between window and plastic. Of course you could just put curtains there.

Ceiling insulation is vital. A smooth and shiny surface is good to reflect heat back down and will also resist microbial growth (easy to clean too).

I would recommend insulating before trying to increase the heating power. Heat rises so super-insulate the ceiling.

I just read your other post about the blinds. It seems you haven’t measured their success yet. I wonder how that goes. If you can also get your humidity to around the 50-60% mark you will find your heating bills will be less.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂