Simplex heater above shop doors

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Can someone please explain to me how curtain heaters work, don’t they waste heat by allowing it to go out the door when opened? Do they consume a lot of energy?
 
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i would expect slight forward aiming to encourage inward flow off heat
but purely a guess??

will be no more no less efficient than any other electric heater and off course heat will be lost through an open door
 
They only work, because they prevent the rest of the general heat in the building, being lost out the door, when the door is open.
 
Some are actually plumbed in with hot water and just have a fan, the smaller electric ones have a total of 3kw internal elements, 3 phase jobbies can be 9kw or more.
The theory I believe is as they say it forms a curtain, in reality I think it's a large expense for little reward
 
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Some are actually plumbed in with hot water and just have a fan, the smaller electric ones have a total of 3kw internal elements, 3 phase jobbies can be 9kw or more.
The theory I believe is as they say it forms a curtain, in reality I think it's a large expense for little reward

I dealt with a 50Kw water heated one, in a massive banking hall. It was choked up, and in winter the entire hall was freezing. Once sorted, the difference was immediate, throughout the room, it was the only heat source in the hall.
 
When set-up properly they are very effective, I did some work in an art store and the only heat source was curtain heating above the vehicle door. During commissioning about this time of year opening and closing the roller shutter didn't seem to make much difference when standing further inside but opening the shutter with the heating off the cold air instantly rushed in.

I think that was six 3KW heaters in an area plenty big enough to park and unload an artic truck.
 
Slightly off topic, but following broadly the same principle (and interesting to me :) )...
On reentry, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket makes a "reentry burn".
This not only slows the rocket down and directs it towards its landing site, but is also a "supersonic retropropulsion burn" - the burning gases from the rocket are used to form a "heat shield".
Despite the huge temperature of the rocket exhaust (the rocket can be designed to sustain this), the plasma created by reentry is far hotter. The high temperature of the rocket exhaust actually protects the rocket from destruction from the enormously high reentry temperatures.
The phrase 'fighting fire with fire' is commonly used to describe the burn.
 
a curtain heater works by providing a stream off warm air as you enter a door to both warm you and warm the cold air entering
it is not an intelligent specific magic heater its more aiming at a problem with whats available [a fairly standard resistance fan heater]adding a description to suggest the problem the heater is designed to solve in its present set up
 
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