Winter already? What’s going on!
We’ve been promised a fantastic end to the summer and it could see glorious sunshine all the way into October and hopefully some great temperatures. Maybe time to get down to the seaside then for that last minute top-up tan?
But wait for it, what’s that around the corner? November, that’s what.
November and December will be here before you know it and with those darker months will come the colder mornings and the frost. Time to get ready before it happens!
Heating in the winter
Do you work in one of those offices that’s run by an autocratic janitor that walks around in a brown coat with a thermometer? Does he sniff at your complaints of cold toes and fingers and ignore you when you ask to turn on the heating even though it’s not October yet?
I used to work in such a place and they actually had a nail in the thermostat stopping people from turning it above a certain temperature. Not only that, the heating was switched on the second week of October and not before. Even if it was frosty. No chance.
This draconian method of environmental control has its fans in the accountants of the world, but for those poor souls that have to work in the cold simply because someone has dictated that it’s not until the 11th October that the temperature drops, it can be a little uncomfortable.
In our office we solved it by having a whole bank of portable heaters stored away which were wheeled in when the temperature dropped and hidden under desks away from the facilities guy who frowned upon their use.
Of course in those days these heaters were inefficient and downright dangerous in some cases. I remember one that resembled an old fashioned fireplace without any of the protective materials to keep toes and fingers off the red-hot elements.
Thankfully things are different now!
Convection heaters
These types of heaters are great at slowly raising the temperature in a room by heating the air internally and then this air rises to fill the room. They’re efficient and in most cases silent so suit most offices. The one problem with them is that people can sometimes be inclined to warm their socks up on them. To be discouraged!
Fan heaters
Fan heaters are great if you want to pump a lot of warm air into a room quickly. Or, if you have a particularly cold room then you can leave them on and they’ll keep the chill off, sometimes making the room quite toasty after a while.
You can get them with various power ratings based on the size of room and how much sweat you want out of your workers.
Halogen heaters
These are particularly clever in that they use infrared light to heat up objects. No contact is required as no air is heated, the infrared light simply hits your legs and warms them up.
Very efficient and cheaper to run although not great for heating large areas. You’ll see a lot of these by the feet of cold receptionists!
Get ready for winter
There’s no news yet on how harsh our winter will be, but you can bet we’ll get at least some weeks of standard British miserable weather, so get yourself prepared!
This article originally appeared in:
http://www.theofficesuppliessupermarket.com/articles/winter-already-whats-going-on
