In any infrared heated yoga studio there are 3 separate components that create the heat which you feel. You can’t see them, but they are present every time you turn the heat on and affect the ambiance that students experience while practicing. Sometimes studios looking to fix or enhance their yoga studio heat focus on the wrong area so it’s important to understand the role that each factor plays in a room when heating a yoga studio.
1. Air temperature. This is the most common way that a yoga studio will describe how hot the room is, by the air temperature that reads on their thermostat. For example, a Vinyasa power flow class is often advertised at 95 degrees, which is how hot the air is in the room. The air temperature will fluctuate in any room, for example in a hot yoga studio the air at the ceiling level is often several degrees hotter than the floor. This is due to stratification of air, or in other words hot air rises and cold air sinks. In studios with high ceilings, this effect is accentuated and the ceiling can be well over 20 degrees hotter! There are ways to help mitigate this and make the room more efficient, by adding ceiling fans and running at low speed in the winter setting.
The air temperature is also cooler along exterior walls and windows in colder months, due to cold radiating from the exterior.
When thermostats show a temperature reading, they are taking a sample of the air temperature internally, and showing this on your display. This is meant to be representative of the air temperature in the room and it is helpful to install thermostats on interior walls, several feet away from doors around 4-5′ high, which typically will produce a fairly accurate reading of the temperature in the room. In larger studios, we also specify remote sensors which will take additional temperature readings around the room and average them to create a more balanced reading to the air.
When studios aren’t able to get the air temperature as high as they would like, there are two possible ways to fix this. The first is to increase the energy input to the room. For infrared heaters this is denoted in wattage, in other words to get a hotter temperature more wattage is needed. The second way to raise air temperature is by changing the envelope of the room, most commonly by adding insulation.
2. Humidity level. Every room has a certain amount of water vapor content in the air which is measured as something called relative humidity. The higher the humidity level, the hotter the room will feel. The combination of air temperature and humidity are also known as the heat index, which is practically how hot a room feels. Below is a chart from NOAA that illustrates this concept in detail.
The natural humidity in a room varies with the seasons, the air is typically the least humid in the wintertime and the most humid in the summertime. To create consistency to how hot a room feels, regardless of the season, about 40% of studios add humidifiers. With humidity a little can go a long way, even adjusting the humidity by 10% can impact how hot the room feels by 10-20 degrees for hot yoga! The most common humidifier we sell is called a Condair RH2 which produces 8lbs per hour of humidity and will boost the heat index for an average size studio by typically 5+ degrees.
When a studio’s air temperature is hot but it still doesn’t feel hot, this is often due to really dry air. This is an excellent case to add a humidifier and help create a more balanced feeling to the air. Since people produce humidity (sweating) and heat (we are mini infrared heaters!) this is also why a class that is full of students will typically feel hotter than an empty class.
3. Infrared warmth. The physiological effect of our infrared heaters adds an additional 5-10 degrees of warmth above the heat index. This is the sun-like warmth that is felt when you are underneath the heaters practicing. As explained in the heat index chart above, the sun itself will add up to 15 degrees of warmth and this is the infrared effect of the sun.
This infrared effect happens whenever the heaters are on regardless of the air temperature or humidity level. For this reason, our heaters work great for therapeutic warmth even for warm yoga classes when the air temperature may be only 70 degrees. The intensity of warmth felt from infrared heaters is directly related to how hot the surface of the heater is, and how close you are to it. For commercial yoga studios that typically have 9-10′ ceilings, the models we use reach over 400 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface. This is necessary in order for the infrared warmth to reach the floor effectively. With lower ceilings we use models that are lower in surface temperature, and with higher ceilings we usually recommend suspending the infrared heaters down.
There are several benefits to using infrared heat which are outlined in our Yoga Studio Guide. Infrared warms students directly, makes the objects around you warmer, and feels much more comfortable than traditional forced air. Plus, infrared heaters are silent and require no maintenance.
If you haven’t been to one of the heated yoga and fitness studios that use our infrared systems feel free to visit one in your area.
To learn more on how to heat your yoga studio contact us today for more information.
Written by Jeff Abel, Vice President of Sales, Heating Green
