Infrared Shortwave / Mediumwave

It's confusing the hell out of me..

I know the difference, shortwave gives off more heater, better for you, and less costly to run, easy.

Medium wave, cheaper to produce, you can buy them a lot cheaper, they are only something like 30% efficient compared to shortwave which is over 70% and they are more costly to run.

Halogen Heater = Medium or Shortwave or both?
Quartz Heater, is that too Medium or Shortwave?

IS an infrared heater any device that gives off Medium or Shortwave?

and once that's sorted out...

How do i know if the heateri 'm buying off the shelf is Medium or Shortwave, other than buying two heaters at the same wattage value, eg 1 halogen heater at 1000watts and sit next to it for 5 minutes and then sit next to a quartz or halogen heater that's supposedly supposed to be shortwave?

For example the shop i go to say they have a Infrared heater, but why would i want to spend 5x more on a heater to give me the same amount of heat my cheap $20 halogen heater gives, is there any way of figuring out if the heater you're buying is shortwave? short of taking it home and returning it if it does not perform as well as your existing electric heater?

Thanks

I'm afraid you are confusing me!

Do you mean short and medium waves in the visible light spectrum? Normally what are called medium waves and short waves are in the radio transmission spectrum well below what you would want for a heater.

Added: Well, I learned something new today. Apparently the infrared spectrum is split into (at least) shortwave and mediumwave. I did some googling and turned up this page which explains the differences pretty well. It looks like these differences are targeted at heating specific materials differently. I have no idea how it would apply to a general space heater.

http://www.infraredheaters.com/basic.htm

Explains the difference between shortwave and medium wave, shortwave is around 80% efficient, IE most of the electricity used gets turned efficiently into heat.

Mediumwave heaters, my cheap halogen $19 heater is medium wave which is only 30% efficient.


http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/BN1500.html?utm_source=kelkoo
Is a shortwave heater

Even that link is confusing because it mentions Quartz and Halogen, as far as i was concerned, Quartz and Halogen are not the same thing or are they?

http://shopping.kelkoo.co.uk/b/a/ss_quartz_heater].html

there's a list of ShortWave/Mediumwave heaters..


In short, i want to heat up the house with a decent heater, and when i say decent, i want to turn as much electric back into heat, and i believe shortwave heaters are the way to go...

problem like i said above is, how the hell do i know the difference between a shortwave heater and a medium wave if all i see is "Quartz" "Halogen" and "Infrared" mentioned.

http://www.buyamag.com/infrared_space_heater.php

Is exactly what i want, but i don't want one of them, i want a Radient heater bigger than that which operates on shortwave to get more heat for the buck.

http://www.glenro.com/Pages/IRquartz.htm

And i Quote (Medium OR Short Wave, how do i know what i'm buying?!)

"



Glenro quartz tube infrared heaters pack massive energy transfer into small spaces. They deliver 50-100 watts per linear inch of clean, quiet heat. Heaters are available with medium wave or short wave tubes. Series 262 and 263 heaters use medium wave quartz tubes, while Series 251 is a high intensity T-3 tube model."

Apparently there are many health benefits attributed to far-infrared heaters, saunas, etc. You may want to google for more info.

Heating products are all long wave IR sources.

1: The Near IR or NIR band is from about 700nm to 1.7 microns
2: The short wave or SW band is from about 1.8 to 2.4 microns
3: The medium wave or MW band is from about 2.4 to 5 microns
4: The long wave or LW band is from about 8 to 14 microns