I've written in the past about heated clothing. After much research, I picked up this heated jacket for myself which can accept any USB power bank rather than requiring proprietary battery packs from the jacket's manufacturer, as is the case with most heated garments.
I then picked up these heated gloves. Pricey to be sure, but I'm not messing around. Same manufacturer, my go-to for heated garments. Their durability stands heads and shoulders over any other heated garments I've tried, and I've tried quite a few cheapo Chinese ones that didn't last a week.
For a long time, I was satisfied with that. My hands and my core always get the coldest. But when this autumn rolled around and I began ebiking out in the chilly October air, my legs started to get really cold from the wind rushing over them at speed. The leg has some huge arteries in it, so the wind carrying heat away from those arteries chilled my blood, stealing heat from the rest of my body.
Of course, as ever, there's a solution. I already had these Omni-heat mylar lined softshell pants by Columbia. Mylar is the most efficient insulator for the least amount of material, reflecting your body heat back at you. (Pants are shown inside-out, to reveal the mylar micro-dot fabric. The exterior is plain black.)
This was adequate for walking and standing, but not cycling. The soft shell material, same as the jacket, does a good job of repelling water, but my legs still got chilly when cycling. The solution? More electric heating! They don't make full heated pants, but they do make heated "Pants liners", basically long underwear:
Even though the heater pads are only over the butt and the knees, simply having heaters trapped inside mylar lined pants winds up heating all the air trapped in there as well. Like sleeping with a hot water bottle under the covers with you.
As a side note, I didn't pay list price for any of these. Those $130 pant liners, for example? I got them for $87. I never buy without shopping around for the lowest price first, usually using Froogle. Also, heated garments and other products are often cheapest during the Summer, when nobody wants such a thing.
Anyways, is this the end of our cozy warm journey? Like hell it is. Why heat all the air in your home or apartment when you can just heat your own body? This idea led me to seek out a heated computer chair. It also has a built in massage function. Just vibrating motors, but they're surprisingly strong.
My only complaint about this chair is that the heat and vibration function turn themselves off after a few minutes, requiring you to push the button on the wireless controller again to reactivate it. There is no "leave on" feature. A pressure sensor which turns these features on when you're sitting in the chair would have been nice.
Still, it's cozy as fuck. But what about the bed? How you gonna spend the day writing articles for Steemit in a comfy heated chair only to crawl into a cold bed? Am I supposed to wait an hour for my body heat to get the space under the covers warm? What am I, a cave man? Heated blanket to the rescue!
I know what you're thinking. "A 12 volt car blanket? Why?" The answer is that every heated blanket I've found intended for home use, which plugs into a 110v socket, breaks in a month. Because they all use resistive heating wire. That's fine for small surfaces (like the heaters in the garments listed above) because they don't flex much.
But the resistive heating wire in a blanket gets folded over on itself and twisted up all the time. Even major name brands have lots of one star reviews saying the blanket didn't last even a month. Yet many 12 volt heated car blankets I found had perfect, glowing reviews. What's the difference?
The method of heating, it turns out. 12 volt blankets use a much thinner heating element that utilizes something called "far field infrared" to generate the heat. I don't quite understand what that is, but it is evidently much more reliable than the resistive heating wire in traditional heated blankets.
So, is that the end of the road? What else is possible? Footwear! I haven't yet covered how to keep your tender little tootsies warm! You have a few options here. For starters, of course, there are heated socks on the market:
I don't have these and cannot vouch for their quality as a result, but I can say they have the most sensible design I have found, and offer an optional higher capacity battery pack for longer heat duration. Many of the heated insoles I found, for example, last about an hour if you're lucky because of the itty bitty built-in battery, which also means the whole unit is kaput when the battery dies. Not so with these socks, which use a removable battery, albeit a proprietary format you must buy from the company (unless you want to crack it open and solder in replacement cells)
This company also makes heated slippers I've had my eye on. How nice would it be to climb out of bed, from under your heated blanket each morning, put on your heated pants liner, then step into some heated slippers?
Real fuckin' nice if you ask me. I don't have the socks or slippers though as I consider the price for these to be unreasonable and haven't found any deals on them yet. I'll keep my eyes peeled though. Once you taste the feeling of heated clothing, like when you were a kid and put on pajamas straight out of the dryer, there is no going back.