These days no pub or restaurant would be without alfresco heating. Unfortunately when it comes to the environment, gas and electricity are about as bad as each other. At last however, there is an environmentally friendly and inexpensive way to offer your guests a little heat on the patio.
Bio fuel patio heaters have arrived.
That has got to be the epitome of pseudo-enviro crap.
They missed a selling point.
The heaters can run on surplus oil from cooking chips and hence provide that welcoming aroma for the guests.
Agreed,
The irony is that a huge surge in commercial patio heating sales is owed to the need for appeasement of smokers. (I s'pose though that tobacco smoking is itself a carbon neutral process).
In the case of palm oil production, the validity of environmental case for it's is very controversial. To use products like this for patio heating is IMHO environmentally indefensible.
Having said that the pub next door to me has a covered patio with a number of electrical heaters like these:
David
More product suggestions:
The could diversify into Chimenea technology to burn crisp packets, supermarket plastic bags and food packaging. (maybe using old car tyres during cold snaps)
They could develop some kind of heat pump to harvest energy from the large amount of 37C waste in the gents.
In message , Vortex wrote
During the winter period the heat is required to stop it freezing in the pipes before it gets back to the kegs in the cellar.
My patio heater is totally green. I had the option of a stainless steel version but it was too shiny so I opted for the green one ;)
Why would anyone want to sit outside in the freezing cold to eat their dinner - by a heater! It's easier to eat indoors and then there is no requirement for a heater and the problem of how it is made and what it burns is eliminated. If using vegetable oil as fuel you need to pay tax in the UK, so it's not as cheap as you suggest. Give us all a laugh, how much are the heaters, what capacity is the fuel tank, how long do they burn for at full blast and why would they have wireless?
In message , Vortex writes
Contraversial ?
Palm oil plantations are decimating the rain forests of Borneo and other valuable jungle areas of the planet
In message , The Medway Handyman wrote
No-one has taken away the individuals choice to smoke!
Despite 10+ years of warnings the licensed trade made the choice not to have clean air in their establishments and have now fallen foul of not providing a safe working environment for their employees.
If smokers had been more tolerant of other peoples views on pollution then there probably wouldn't have been a need to ban smoking in enclosed public places. Too often the attitude was we have the right to smoke wherever we like and if you don't like it p**s off elsewhere - but we want the right to smoke there as well!
I'm afraid they have. The Oxford Pipe Smokers Club to name one example cannot allow its members to smoke pipes indoors.
Two points. Publicans could have been given the choice to become smoking or non smoking venues. Customers would then have a choice. The H&S argument simply doesn't hold water since there is no scientific evidence that passive smoking is a health hazard and in any case, staff could also have been allowed a choice.
The real problem is that the legislation was deliberately designed to be punitive. Something that would be condemned in any other circumstances.
Now you're just taking the piss...
In message , Andrew Gabriel writes
Piss off
Stella then, please
Or they could be run on the hot air emitted by marketing men and politicians.
No they wouldn't. This 'choice' has been tried. All pubs chose to be "smoking", and would continue to do so.
That's obvious, so you don't have to go out into the cold to turn it on and off.
All lager sold in this establishment has been passed by the management.
It has? News to me and to FOREST. If that were the case, or if we had sensible legislation and allowed choice, market forces would change things. Since non smokers are in the majority there would automativally be a majority of non smoking venues.
In message , The Medway Handyman wrote
To be free of smoke potential customer elected to do something else rather than risk a visit to the pub.
There are more non-smoking venues than pubs - peoples own homes. Nationally, pubs were already losing a massive amount of trade with fewer people willing to enter smoke filled premises. For many years there have been around 60 pubs a month closing and in the last 20 years beer sales in pubs have fallen by nearly 50% or around 15 million pints a day! This is the result of the choice the 'trade' made.
Social attitudes to smoking have changed but unfortunately the licensed trade took very little notice. Even the enlightened pub owners that introduced no-smoking zones had trouble enforcing it because for some strange reason smoke doesn't recognise non-physical barriers.
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