Why the Pros Use Our Infrared Lamps for Brooding and Horse Solariums
When you’re building an automated brooding system or a horse solarium, you’re walking a fine line. You need enough heat to keep the animals healthy and warm, but if you overdo it, you risk burning their skin. It’s a balancing act. That’s exactly why we build our lamps the way we do.
Getting the heat where it actually matters
We stick with shortwave infrared. Here is the thing: longwave heat just warms up the air around the animal. Shortwave is different. It sinks deeper, right into the muscle tissue. To make that happen, we use high-purity quartz glass. Most glass absorbs too much energy, but this stuff lets the heat fly straight through the envelope and hit the target. It’s direct. No wasted energy.
The grit and the gear
Our solarium tubes pack a lot of punch into a small space. We obsess over the watts-per-centimeter because that’s what dries a horse’s coat quickly. But let’s be real—high wattage puts a massive strain on your wiring. If you use cheap connectors, they’ll melt. Plain and simple. That’s why we use reinforced terminals. Just make sure your control boards and relays can handle the peak current, or you’re asking for trouble.
Choosing your coating
You’ve got two choices here: coated or uncoated. Gold or titanium coatings help tweak the temperature, which is great for specific brooding needs. You’ll pay a bit more, and you lose a tiny bit of raw power, but it’s worth it for the precision. Uncoated lamps are the budget-friendly, “hot-as-hell” option. They work great, but be careful. If they’re too close to a sensitive foal or a calf, they can be way too intense.
Making it easy to maintain
We don’t want you redesigning your whole chassis just to swap a bulb. Our lamps are standard dimensions, so they just drop right in. We’ve also seen too many systems fail because the lamps literally vibrated loose. We fixed that by tightening the tolerances on the end caps. They stay put. One last tip: if you’re running these 24/7, the filaments will eventually thin out. It happens. To avoid a total burnout in the dead of winter, just swap them out every 2,000 to 5,000 hours. Your animals (and your stress levels) will thank you.