Catalyst Vineyard Church is a multi-site evangelical church in the north east of Scotland. Historically, our various church locations would meet in rented venues throughout the region, however, the pandemic soon meant that physical in-person church gatherings were not possible.

In response to the rapidly changing situation we took on a warehouse building for the purpose of livestreaming our church services online. The size of the warehouse allowed us to create several recording stage areas which was a must have during a time where social distancing was so import for the safety of everyone involved.

One of the problems that we soon came up against was that the warehouse space only had one working high level gas blower which was inefficient and noisy! (noise is something you really don’t want when recording sound). We would turn off the heating when recording our church services so that you wouldn’t have the heating banging away in the background, but this also meant that everyone that was involved was sat in the freezing cold for a number of hours. 

Without delay, we started looking for a solution to our very specific situation. We were in need of a heating solution for targeted areas (our recording stages), that would not produce any noise or light pollution. 

I came across the Infrared Company when searching the internet and was actually quite enthused by seeing that they had a few reviews on there from other churches. I was particularly interested in a review made by Graeme Baldwin of City Praise Centre, as their building looked very similar to our warehouse venue. I made contact with Graeme to try and get as much information on their experience before we looked to spend any money. One of the things I felt quite encouraged by was that the heating panels were a system that was easy to install, and you could start small and just buy more if needed.

I then got our electrician involved and we planned on how to make these panels work in our venue. We initially ordered just 6 x 2kw No-Glow infrared heating panels, with the idea being to suspend 1 panel over each stage area. A few weeks later we had the panels up and hanging above each stage area, however, it was a real headache to try and find the best setup for our needs.

Eventually, we found that mounting 2 x 2kw panels on adjustable chains (at a slight angle) side by side, and at a lower level was the way forward for at least one of the stage areas. This gave us a higher concentration of heat in one location. The other stage areas required a similar kind of ‘experimenting’ attitude to find the right balance.