Heating a Lab

[Confuto]

For those of you with outside labs... How do you heat your lab in the winter? cant use any source of open flame or hot wire. I was thinkin warm water through tubes...

[jackhole]

I've used my regular magnetic stirring hotplace with an extra extention cord.

[starlight]

are available but they are very expensive.

[hest]

In most of last cent. all chemist used open flames, and with werrye few explotions as a result. Open fire is not a problem in a decent lab.

[Un_Chambered]

Unfourtunetely most bee's don't have/run a "decent" lab but more of a "ghetto" lab so to speak and are working with limited funds=not fully/properly equiped=lacking full saftey precautions.
I don't reccomend not properly educated(as in school/career)bee's use open flames in the lab when dealing w/possibly flammable/explosive chemichals.Don't underestimate your ability to fuck up,it can and will happen bee properly prepared,you'll bee glad.I don't know about you all but I sure don't like to turn on the news and here about yet another lab fire/bust even if mabey they did need a wake-up call and change of hobbies.
Peace,chambered

[lugh]

First of all, a lot of bees that work in cold climates use the ambient temperature to make air and other condensers much more efficient, so heating the work area can be counterproductive    It depends on several factors, such as the flammability of the solvents you're working with, how big the area is, whether it's insulated and how much ventilation you have    SWIL has seen cars that were painted in freezing conditions heated with catalytic propane heaters to dry the paint, with no fires ever occuring, despite the flammable nature of the paint, and electric heaters using coils as well    Those electric heaters with oil filled radiators should be safer than the above mentioned methods of heating, if their heat output is adequate for the area being heated  

[scram]

Outside winter cooking is the best! Low humidity = easy crystalization. The solvents are all so low temp that your vapour pressures lower quite a bit making smells minimal. Your sass will smell more than your solvents. The problem is that you have to understand that your density of liquids changes drastically when you are working in 5 to 10 c ambient temperatures.

[starlight]

if you are changing the air regularly in the room to reduce exposure/inhalation of chemicals you end up heating the outdoors anyway.

[Confuto]

The area I live in gets very cold. A source of heat in the lab is almost a must to allow electronics to work (i.e. hotplate control, clocks, timers. etc) so even though most of the air is expelled through vents, a constant source of heat is needed to keep at least a temp above 32F. The cold does not bother me, just some equipment. Anyone else have that problem?

[homeslice]

I dont live in too cold of an area but it does get cold like say around 25F during winter months or lower. Its not like alaska or anything. I had problems with distillations using a vigreux column as the gas would only go so far up the condenser then condense and reflux back into the flask, no matter how much i heated it. Even after many attempts at insulating the column it wouldnt work so i went out and bought a cheap little heater and pointed it at the column to keep it at a decent temp. Seemed to work fine then?
Sometimes my stirrer needed to heat up a little bit too before it would go at full speed.