Basically i was interested in buying this ‘Philips Heat Lamp R40 Flood Light Bulb: 250-Watt’ to heat up my home and some other stuff (u can search this on amazon.com u can probably find this bulb easily if u wanna give it a look) but i have read few articles that say direct eye contact with these bulb can cause eye damage / corneal burn and other stuff which tbh does sound dangerous again i don’t wanna risk my eyes our a little heat so i thought i would ask here as u guys know a lot about wavelength’s and stuff.so it is really this dangerous and can harm my eyes and my vision?i also have few questions.
will i get any sort of eye damage by looking at the light the bulb is emitting lets say on the ground or wall without directly making an eye contact with the bulb?
Is looking directly at bulb harmful?as setting it up etc would require me to look at the bulb incase its harmful can u tell me some sort of safety glasses that i can wear to set it up?as ill be in quite a close range while i am doing that i heard infrared has like 1000nm so these bulbs being red and IR maybe should have like 700-1000nm wavelength or am i wrong?if i am wrong then what is the wavelength for these type of bulb and what safety glasses are recommended for it if close range or directly looking at the bulb could damage my eyes?
ok so i do have to set it up which means ill look at it closely during that time so would it be ok for short span of times?completely safe for eyes?how long would u recommend me to look at the bulb directly?also if we look at the light ( like on floor or wall etc ) i am assuming that would be safe correct?
I remember when I was a kid, our bathroom had a fixture in the ceiling, with 3 or 4 of those bulbs. Kick that thing on a couple of minutes before using the toilet, it warmed it up nice. Never had a problem even having it on for a full shower.
If you read this correctly “direct eye contact with these bulb can cause eye damage / corneal burn” it is simply a warning that the glass envelope on this bulb gets hot and if you are careless enough to put the hot bulb directly to your eye it will burn your eye. Any 250W incandescent bulb, even in the visible spectrum, gets hot enough to burn you if you touch the glass envelope after just a few minutes.
It is not a warning that the infrared spectrum will cause eye damage. If that were the case, any wood fire that you stare at could damage your eyes. That’s obviously not true.
I’ve installed a few of them over the years in bathrooms. Don’t touch it while it’s hot and it’s not any more dangerous than any other incan bulb. It does require a fixture designed for it. You don’t need to just screw it in any ceiling base or table lamp.
IMHO I would suggest a simple space heater over a heat lamp to heat up a room.
Hmm i see thanks for answering my question so i assume its 100% safe to look at it but i have to be careful not to touch it while its hot or keep it too close to my eyes while its on?also why u would not recommend to use this bulb without a fixture bro?
I am reading this post and scratching my head. Just like you don’t point an unloaded gun at someone, you don’t look at any powerful light source directly. Be it the sun, a flashlight, or an incandescent light. You just don’t do it. You don’t ask how many watts it is or how many lumens it is. You just don’t do it.
As for heating your house or even a room, this can’t possibly be a good idea. An incandescent light is the single most inefficient circuit. You would save more money by pouring money down the drain.
Not to mention the safety factor in this case very high risk.
Bad idea no matter which way you look at it.
My opinion, which may be different than your opinion but nonetheless equally valid.
The idea behind this bulb is not to heat a room but to warm the skin of the person who receives the infrared light. It really doesn’t do much to warm the air in the room. If you want to understand just how little real heat it puts out, you need to be able to convert between kWh, BTUs, and therms.
Compare it to the heat put out by a gas furnace. Mine is rated at 100,000 BTUs per hour. That converts to almost exactly 1 therm of heat. The electricity equivalent of 1 therm is 29.3 kWh.
The output for a 250W bulb run for an hour and converted only to heat would be 0.0086 therms. You get that by dividing 0.25 by 29.3. Your 250W bulb is not really a good way to heat the air in a room but works great to make your skin feel warm.
