Smokers Zones

The legislation has changed and now smokers are no longer welcome indoors, in clubs, restaurant, pubs or anywhere else except the smokers own homes and even in their home environment it has become politically incorrect to smoke. If a restaurant or café is to compete affectively they need to make provision for their smoking guests' comfort and provide them with a suitable area in which to smoke. Protection from the rain is part of that equation; however, Heat Outdoors is the other.

Whilst most cafes and restaurants look to provide good looking classy smoking environments many pubs still opt for the bare minimum with perhaps a cheap parasol, a few plastic chairs and a nasty gas heater. It soon becomes clear after the gas heaters runs out of gas a few times that this is not an effective way of keeping guests happy and something more permanent and thoughtful needs putting in place.

Parasols are ideal structures from which to attach electric heaters as the heat is directed downwards and away from the parasol, benefiting now only the guests below but also protecting the parasol itself from being affected by the heat and bursting into flames. The two main factors to be considered here are 1) is the parasol of suitable stature to sustain the weight of the outdoor heaters? and 2) do the outdoor heaters generate sufficient heat to keep the people below comfortable?

Heaters can be mounted on parasols in one of two ways. Pole mounting is the more common and generally the central pole needs to be 35mm across as a minimum, however, 50mm plus is better. The brackets that attach to the poles are fixed by clamps that screw into the pole, applying pressure on it from all directions. If the pole is a cheap weak one it might succumb and get squashed! Options are available providing up to 3.9kW of heat with the Helios Jolly Tris that will provide a substantially large heated area of up to 20 square meters.

The second parasol option is to mount smaller heaters on individual brackets, to either the central pole or the cross members. On many professional parasols it is possible to mount the small heaters in this way, such as the Helios Top or Tansun Carnival and still be able to collapse the parasol with the heaters in situ. This can be a good time saving benefit; however, one must always remember to turn the heaters off first!!!

Burda Term 2000 outdoor heaters are also excellent products to wall mount in outdoor smoking areas as they are made from solid aluminum and will not be affected by whatever the weather has to throw at them. They are also German engineered which means in all likelihood they will have a longer life than from the average smoker!

It is clear that gas patio heaters are a thing of the past, being environmentally unsound, inefficient and in most cases downright ugly. Electric outdoor patio heaters are the future.