Daily Granny Gram:Warm Heart, Battery-Heated Outerwear

The concept of battery-heated outerwear took a long time to hit the store racks and regular people's backs in this Canada, this Land of Overwhelming Winter. I think we all heard about battery-heated mittens back in the 70s. Most of us didn't know that motorcyclists, ski-ers, and other more elite winter athletes were plugging into battery-operated heated outerwear in the 1990s. The closest many of us came to electrically-heated comfort was the driver's battery-heated car seat.

The human body strives to produce and retain heat under environmentally chilling conditions not just for health reasons, but also to be comfortable. In very cold weather it is necessary to keep moving, to metabolize to produce heat. Shivering is the hypothermic body's last-ditch attempt to pump up the heat.

Traditional cold-weather outerwear is often bulky and prone to get damp (and then cold) with precipitation or overheating that produces sweat (as in the fellow who shovels snow from his driveway. One must keep moving to keep warm. The stress of being cold and wet takes its toll on the immune system.

Well, the Age of Battery-Heated Outerwear has arrived! For about the cost of a vacation for one to Hawaii for two weeks on the beach in January you can outfit yourself and your favourite grandkids to keep warm in those white-out walks in a prairie blizzard. (I forget, why do people live where they have blizzards?) You can even get a battery-heated mat, bed and bowl for Bowzer (bowl?) so that he doesn't have to be uncomfortably chilly either.

For example, a woman's Brookstone soft-shell heated jacket can be warmed up, in 3 heat zones on your back and chest, to a flaming 113 degrees Fahrenheit (whew-- that's hotter than on the beach in Hawaii-- more like a lake beach in Southern Saskatchewan in mid-July!)

• The technology is such that you can turn the temperature up and down (like an old-fashioned, pre-computerized home thermostat) for comfort and for convenience, the ultra-slim battery pack does not have to be re-charged for up to five hours (*depending on how high you are hiking that baby up).
• The jacket is non-bulky and attractively tailored
• The shell has three handy layers that resist light rain and snow, act as a windbreaker, and the laminate layer helps the jacket to breathe so you don't over-heat
• Inside cuffs and cinch cords at the waist prevent heat from escaping or cold from coming in

Along with the jacket you might like to accessorize with:

• battery-heated thermal soles to insert into your shoes or boots (keep your feet warm for up to 8 hours)
• battery-heated socks
• battery-heated sweaters
• battery-heated gloves
• battery-heated pants

With battery-operated heat you can continue to be toasty warm even if your clothes are damp or if you are sitting on a bleacher at a football game in -20 weather-- you don't have to move around OR change into dry clothing to maintain body warmth.
Motorcylists will typically use their motorcycle's 12 V. battery as a source of energy for their battery-warmed clothing. A jacket or leggings will not be a drain, but if several pieces of clothing are attached it might turn out to be a down-day for H. Davidson.
A gel pack can still be used to heat up pockets, etc. The gel pack is heated in the microwave oven and then placed in the pockets of the jacket to warm it up along the flanks and allow for warming of the hands. There are several sorts of chemical heating packs that have been used over the years, but the rechargeable battery pack appears to have caught on as being effective, safe, convenient, and enviro-friendly.