heating home studio

Whatever heat source you choose, always make sure that you insulate your room well (we used polystyrene, covered with plastic. Cheap and works fantastic!). The material pays for itself within a few months because you will need less electricity and easily achieve hot yoga studio temperatures of 38-40 degrees Celsius. I use a small fan heater and like that very much because it reacts fast, especially when it gets too hot.Some radiant heaters stay hot for a long time after switching them off, so it will be more difficult to cool your room. Because of low humidity, I also use a small humidifier that gives hot steam. Which really helps is inviting a friend: every human being produces extra heat and humidity!!
If you insulate the room well, don’t forget a small air inlet (I use a tiny bathroom fan) and outlet so you will have enough fresh air. An extra fan to bring the heat that naturally goes up, down again is also helpful.
We didn’t insulate the floor in this house and it is winter time now. Last week we decided to put a thin layer of special insulating foil and on top of that the cheapest carpet we could find. It makes a difference of 4 degrees and the room heats up much faster. We reach a temperature of 38 degrees within 20 minutes again. The most important thing to insulate first: ceiling and windows and close all air leaks near doors.
Good luck with your yoga room!

I am sure there are many more ways to insulate the room, but we were looking for something cheap as we are renting the house and won’t be staying here. If we will ever stay in a place for a longer time, we will also put wall panels on top of the polystyrene/plastic and / or maybe use rockwool, to make it really nice. What we did: we bought many polystyrene sheets of 1 meter x 0.5 meter (5 cm thickness). We drilled holes and screwed long pieces of wood into the ceiling and walls with exactly 1 meter in between and ‘clamped’ the polystyrene in between.If you measure well, the polystyrene will not fall down and afterward you cover it all with plastic (as you need a moisture resistant layer to avoid moulds on your wall), which you can do easily with an industrial stapler. You can staple into the wood and also screw mirrors et cetera into the wood later as well. Sometimes we had to cut small pieces of the polystyrene sheets to fill holes, but that’s very easy. It is important to fill all holes and avoid any airflow behind the plastic.
All these products were available in standard ‘do it yourself’ stores. I live in South America and I guess these things are available in South Africa as well.
I bought the thermometer in an anti allergy shop (!), where I saw it by coincidence. It is a digital thermometer that also shows the humidity and costs around 30 (US) dollars. But I guess there are alternatives available as well.
If you want some more information, I will be happy to send you some pictures to show you how we did it and make it more clear. I think you can send me a private message on this forum with your e-mail address.
I am so enthusiastic about our yoga room that I am convinced I will always have one, even if I live next door to a yoga studio!