audioguru

A house near me caught on fire. The car on the driveway in front of the house also caught on fire (its plastic bumper and front tires) from the radiated heat.

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Uncle $crooge

Hero999

I wonder how much heat the burning house was kicking out, it must be somewhere in the 1MW region to do things like that!

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audioguru

A silly woman saw maggots (worms from flies) in her garbage can. So she put gasoline in it and lit it on fire inside the wooden garage. There were so many people attracted by the black smoke (I was the first person there) that the fire department had a difficult drive up the steet. The house also caught on fire then the flames lit the house next door on fire. Lots of heat.

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Uncle $crooge

stevez

They do make/sell several items that may be useful. If I had to guess your desire would be to have "heating socks" that are fully mobile and are not an impediment to movement. I don't have much to offer there. For a relatively fixed situation I wonder about the following:

A. Heating pad (electric) such as you might apply to a sore back - more or less a small electric blanket. You might arrange that vertically or nearly so, where you sit, so that it is behind your legs. I mention this because these items are relatively safe and made for such an application.

B. They do make electric heating pads or mats that lay flat on the floor. While it does not address more than the sole of your foot this might provide some relief - and eases the burden of batteries for electric socks.

C. They do make electric or hot water radiant panel heaters. Usually a flat, relatively warm surface that is horizontal or vertical. These are usually made for fixed locations. The advantage of these - they are moderately warm rather than scorching hot.

If I had a similar problem I'd consider creating a smaller version of what we had in the house when I was a kid. We had a coal/wood furnace in the basement and one rather large metal grille in the floor where heat would rise. On cold mornings that's where we'd go to warm up.

Consider a box as a plenum with a perforated plate on top with an amount of warm air blowing upward. As with anything, you'd have to be sure you built in appropriate safety features.

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stevez

Hero999

Well it looks like it work, all those nasty maggots must've died for sure!

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Ambient

Sounds like a Darwin Award candidate, just give her a few more years in training.

If you are handy at stitching you could take apart some heated socks and re-stitch the heating element around the ankle area. Or check out some hunting gear websites, like cabelas. There is a lot of extreme cold gear out there. They may have some unheated socks that will work fine. The other thing you could try (not very economical though) are the hand warmers. Stuff one in each sock and you are ready to go. But some don't get very hot, others get unbearably hot. The brand I use is called "Hot Hands"

EDIT: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0007ZF4OA/