[ST] About the lack of radiant heat in the lobby

[Bill Y]

   From: Carsten Turner <carsten at netway.com>

   X-CRM114-Status: GOOD (  14.71  )

   Jan, I understand where you're coming from. I spent years working as an 
   EMT, and have seen plenty of examples of human stupidity at work. I am 
   thankful for your concern, but I think your fears are unfounded in this 
   instance.

   Given that Arisia has been using propane-fired heaters of this kind for 
   years without issue, I think the benefit of having heat vastly 
   overrides any danger inherent in a heating device. The big safety 
   factor at work during load-in/out is that these will be used with a lot 
   of de-facto supervision. Load-in/out is typically freaking cold (which 
   easily explains a chronic dearth of volunteers,) and if anything, 
   people will pay A Lot Of Attention To The Heat Source (because everyone 
   wants to get warm,) rather than forgetting that we have a few dragons 
   placed in strategic (and well populated) locations. Arisia runs a far 
   greater risk of volunteers sustaining frostbite injuries than burning 
   themselves, by a factor of "too much."

   Note that I won't be involved with logistics this year, but these are 
   just my personal observations from past experience. YMMV.

Ahhh... OK.

So it seems we have *two* issues here: heat for loadin/
loadout, and heat for the checkin area.  Two problems may mean
two solutions.

If you have continuous (and I mean that) supervision for the heaters,
you might be OK.  

But at the front desk for checkin, people are gonna drop luggage and
coats where they may- and that may be way WAY to close (or even over)
heaters.

Hmmm... think think click click - something I do at home is to use a
"carpenter's light" - two 500-watt halogen lamps on a pole-and-tripod -
as a "warming zone"   The lights are about six or seven feet off the
ground- and more importantly, are not easily blockable or tippable.
And if it does tip- the bulb usually breaks on impact so power is 
shut off.

Each of these pole-and-tripods is 1000 watts, or about 3500 BTUs,
and also provides plenty of light for doing detailed work like
filling out forms or reading the little CCV codes on the back
of credit cards.

Of course, they may be a leeeetle bright to illuminate the screens of
a laptop, but in fact Penney and I do use it just that way fairly
often.  And the kittens love them; three feet away from the lamps
themselves (that is, the top of the couch) is noticeably warm but (as
measured by thermocouple and IR noncontact thermometer) never exceeds
105 degF, which is certainly acceptable.

For check-in, may I suggest that you buy a couple of these
pole-n-tripods at Home Despot or Lowes, a spare bulb (total: abut $50)
and deploy them between every other person doing checkin, firing down
at them _sideways_ so as not to wash out the screen illumination..

Bad Ascii Art follows where \O/ is a person facing "north" and
a >o< is a pole light with the lights firing east and west.:

   
      Incoming...Crowd...Goes.....Here

    -------   -------   -------   -------
    |table|   |table|   |table|   |table|
    -------   -------   -------   -------
      \O/  >o<  \O/       \O/  >o<  \O/

   =========B=A=C=K===W=A=L=L=================

Does this work out in terms of safety as well as warmth?

And- is there 2000 watts to spare on that wall?

	- Crash