What’s inside disposable hand warmers?

For winter sports enthusiasts, hand warmers (for example: SUNJACK HEAT BANK ) can mean the difference between calling it a day early and playing outside for as long as possible. In fact, anyone who braves cold temperatures might be tempted to try the little disposable pouches that emit warmth within seconds of being exposed to air.

Hand warmers date back centuries to when people in Japan would use hot stones to warm their hands, says Keiko Ishikawa, a marketing manager at hand warmer maker Mycoal USA. Portable hand warmers filled with hot ash were the version that followed, she says. These days, you can buy a variety of hand warmers based on battery packs and lighter fuel, but disposable hand warmers rely entirely on chemistry.

Disposable hand warmers turn up the heat in your mittens by means of an exothermic reaction that, in essence, just creates rust. Each pouch typically contains iron powder, salt, water, an absorbent material, and activated carbon. When the pouch is removed from its outer packaging, oxygen drifts across the pouch’s permeable covering. With salt and water present, the oxygen reacts with the iron powder located inside to form iron oxide (Fe2O3) and release heat.

The absorbent material can be pulverized wood, a polymer such as polyacrylate, or a silicon-based mineral called vermiculite. It helps retain the moisture so that the reaction can occur. The activated carbon helps to evenly disperse the heat produced, which can average 135 °F.


Although the chemistry of disposable hand warmers is simple, their engineering is more complicated. “You want to make this thing act quickly because people like to open up the packet and feel warm right away, but you also want it to last a long time,” says Joe Vergona, manager of engineering and product development at Grabber Performance Group, a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based company that sells hand warmers. For example, some hand warmers last seven hours, and others can last more than 24 hours.


To lengthen the time a hand warmer lasts, some companies opt to increase the amount of iron in the packet, Vergona says.


Another strategy is to experiment with the iron powder. “If you vary the raw materials in the warmer, you can change how quickly the reaction happens or how much of the warmer is reacted at one time,” Vergona adds. For example, the greater the surface area of the iron, the more it can react with oxygen to produce heat, he says.


The pouch material also affects the performance of the hand warmers. “It’s a balance of the ingredients inside the pack and the performance characteristics of the pouch itself,” Vergona says. The iron powder and other ingredients are contained in a blended nonwoven material that has specific permeability characteristics. If the pouch admits more oxygen, the reaction occurs more quickly. Toe warmers, for example, use a nonwoven material that lets in more oxygen to compensate for the low-oxygen environment inside a shoe. “The level of perforation, the size of the holes—all that’s going to govern how much oxygen enters the warmer,” Vergona says.


To extend the shelf life of hand warmers, the outside wrapper is specially chosen to ensure that minimal amounts of oxygen get in and minimal water gets out. “Any old plastic, and the hand warmers will last a week and die,” because oxygen can get in and spoil the product, Vergona says. The outside wrappers are usually made of polymers such as the plastic polyethylene.


The main difference between disposable hand warmers and some reusable versions is the chemicals used to produce the heat-releasing reaction. Reusable hand warmers don’t contain iron but instead use a supersaturated solution of sodium acetate that releases heat as it crystallizes. Boiling the used packet restores the solution to its supersaturated state. Air-activated hand warmers can’t be reused.


Disposal hand warmers don’t just keep humans from getting too cold. Grabber also sells heavy-duty warmers that can help tropical fish survive transportation through chilly climates.

A Cavity Drain Membrane System

Waterproofing is a critical factor for anybody who's developing a cellar that they plan to make use of for storage or habitable accommodation.

Too frequently cellar waterproofing isn't given high enough priority and consequently, a low-cost and improper cellar waterproofing alternative can be used to get inside an unrealistic budget. This frequently results in failure as well as the resultant consequential losses could be devastating for whoever owns the building or property.

New assemble cellars in many cases are designed and constructed from nicely ranked and even 'watertight concrete', concrete block or blocks with concrete infill. A nicely constructed and built construction will normally form the primary resistance to water ingress as the concrete is too dense for water to pass through. Yet we must remain aware that where you can find building joints there's the danger of failure even if water bars, hydrophilic/hydrophobic strips are nicely installed.

With this borne in mind it's definitely a recommendation that in addition to the construction itself, a secondary type of cellar waterproofing is embraced even in the event the construction is fresh and assembled from 'watertight concrete'.

When the concrete building itself is regarded as being integrally watertight this is called type B kind of cellar waterproofing.

Where the construction isn't regarded as integrally waterproofing then we have 2 choices for coping with all the possibility of water ingress. One will be to Tank it and the other is to waterproof it having a Cavity Drain Membrane.

Taking a cellar means that the product is implemented internally or externally and was created to physically prevent and hold back the water. This can be called Type A cellar waterproofing.

A Cavity Drain Membrane system is placed on the internal face of the earth retaining structure where it may accept the ingress of water depressurize it and handle it into a safe evacuation point. This really is called type C kind of cellar waterproofing.

Tanking as a type of cellar waterproofing to new constructions has built-in dangers. Whether you use it internally or externally to the construction tanking systems should be used 100% defect free to be effective, if water is delivered under pressure from the construction. As dispute and High Court case between two firms Outwing Construction and Thomas Wetherald has set a precedent in the cellar waterproofing business and UK law. The opinion in the High Court of Justice was that it's not practical to get a tanking or waterproofing Bronx system to be used 100% defect free. What this signifies is the fact that in the event that you design for or use a cellar waterproofing system to the construction which must be 100% free of blemishes to work plus it fails you could be responsible for the results of the failure. By their very nature, all tanking systems should be 100% defect free to work when examined by water under pressure from your earth.

Most new construct cellar waterproofing layouts that include an outside banking system likewise incorporate a land drain the reason of which will be to help de-water the nearby earth regions and decrease the amount of water that's delivered contrary to the construction. You can find generally many related difficulties with land drains found in cellar waterproofing. A land drain ought to be placed on the not in the construction below the degree of the internal slab so that it is helpful to ease the volume of water to the total depth of the retained earth. Many times the place of the land drain is revealed on a drawing or installed above the internal slab amount and for that reason could only ever be somewhat successful.

This is why everyone should be careful about making this decision otherwise one can be easily mistaken and make the mistake over and over again. For more information use Google or any other search engine system as it will be easier to find a solution to the problem if you try to do a little research by yourself.
'The kind and feasibility of curative treatment' is a buzz phrase in the cellar waterproofing business. It means if there's a difficulty getting the capacity to reunite to something to identify where and what the issue is and then rectify it. This can be an issue with both outside tanking and land drains as they can be frequently buried under tons of earth. The size of the land drain is just another problem as who can correctly forecast the volume of water which may be anticipated to return to have at any moment as time goes by? Additionally as said the tanking system may rely greatly on the land drain and how can anybody ensure it against defect or blockage in the future - again the type and feasibility of curative treatment come into question.

The BS8102:2009 (British Standard code of practice for protection of underground structures against water in the earth) advocates a maintainable cellar waterproofing system. A buried outside the banking system and land drain aren't readily frequently maintainable.

Creating a solid cellar structure to form the most important resistance against water is advisable but where there are building joints we ought to anticipate that water ingress could happen at some stage. So a more dependable type of secondary waterproofing aside from the construction itself is a cavity drain membrane system or Type C cellar waterproofing.

Prior to the recent revision of the BS8102:2009 the preceding code of practice BS8102:1990 said that Type C type of building and waterproofing was the most 'trouble free and successful'. Now the BS8102 says that Type A, B, and C together is the most successful which probably goes without saying but as a stand alone cellar waterproofing system type C cavity drain membrane is still more dependable the others.

Cavity drain membrane cellar waterproofing systems take into consideration these points:

• Where the earth is kept against a construction we ought to contemplate that water will enter the fabric of the building at some point because of constructions life.

• When water enters a construction and locates an air gap it depressurizes and loosened its potency.

And so the manner a cavity drain membrane cellar waterproofing systems enjoy System 500 works will be to offer air gaps and thus depressurisation zones on the interior of the construction which alleviate the water pressure. This can be performed firstly with an 8mm studded membrane applied to the walls. The study profile functions to hold the merchandise somewhat far from the construction to which it's used. Any water entering through the walls is depressurized within the air gap given by the study of a membrane, decreases its potency and falls to the wall/floor junction. A perforated drainage conduit is situated in the bottom of the wall either in a recessed channel in the slab or on the slab having a layer of closed cell insulating material. The drainage conduit serves 3 main functions. The foremost is that it gathers and delivers water to a suitable drainage way out to be evacuated from your construction. The second is that it functions as a formwork in the wall/floor junction which functions to steadfastly keep up an air gap and thus depressurization zone in the point where water enters or ends up in most constructions i.e. the wall/floor junction. Thirdly it enables future care and testing of the machine via rodding/inspection interfaces situated in the ring chief of a conduit and therefore conforms to the recommendations in BS8102. Another characteristic of some providers drainage conduit is a separated fin layout on the rear face of every section. In a few cellar waterproofing layouts where it's appropriate, this addresses the hazard of condensation forming on the dry side of the membrane and also using the chance of imperfections (small tears/holes/rips in the membrane) by keeping an open wall/floor junction.

The drainage conduit is linked to either passive or powered means of evacuating the water. Passive means emptied naturally by gravity to a current drainage wall socket, open raising or designed in drainage. Powered is where not one of the aforementioned alternatives is available or possible as well as a sump and pump can be used.

A flooring membrane is used from the other side of a floor region as a vapor barrier and linked to the drainage conduit or wall membrane to finish the cellar waterproofing system.

Just about any wall and flooring finish needed might be performed along with a Cavity Drain Membrane System.

The features of employing a cavity membrane system are:-

• There's frequently little or no preparation
• they're adaptable and may proceed together with the construction.
• They will not be vapor permeable.
• they're believed to be sympathetic to the construction and reversible
• They can cater for less than sufficient workmanship and interstitial condensation.
• They might be maintainable.
• They can be used in significantly less than perfect site states so Won't hold up a job program.
• They might be examined prior to installing fixtures and appointments.
• 10 year guaranteed guarantees can be got when installing with the right specialist.
• Complete layout responsibility can choose by particular specialist cellar waterproofing contractors

How To Use Social Media To Sell Your Products

Similar to traditional marketing tactics, selling your products on social media starts with targeting your audience and spreading the word. However, your sales efforts require a more casual approach than the direct methods that are conventionally practiced in the off-line world. Even though social networks are primarily used for information and entertainment, they also provide insights about your prospects' interests, needs, and concerns. This can then be used to gradually convert your social media followers into loyal and satisfied customers. Here are some more tips to follow.

Determine the best social venue

Each social network is predominantly composed of one type of audience. LinkedIn is ideal for building business-to-business (B2B) relationships while Instagram may appeal more to younger people interested in the latest trends such as lifestyle and fashion. Meanwhile, Twitter's broader audience often attracts early technology adapters who want to stay informed about their interests on the go. Establish a solid presence on the most appropriate social network based on your business's products, services, and objectives.

Deliver a great presentation

Speak the same lingo as your audience by presenting your information in fun and digestible ways to help maximize your reach. Rely on visuals, such as images and videos, along with concise headlines, to grab the attention of your followers immediately. For example, Instagram recently reported that the time users spent watching video increased by over 40 percent, suggesting a powerful trend that could lead to higher engagement and leads. Additionally, establish a likable persona that is consistent with your prospects' primary way of communicating, such as using mild humor in your posts and updates.

Build trust and authority

It is nearly impossible to sell your products on social media without building a mutual sense of trust with your followers. Connect with those who have expressed interest in your industry by searching for business-related phrases and buzzwords. Posting updates with relatable hashtags (where applicable) allows more people to see your posts and potentially establish a connection with your business. Engage with your audience by answering their questions and concerns, as well as sharing any thoughts that are relatable to your industry. Most importantly, remain consistent about your posting schedule to establish a friendly and familiar presence over time.

Avoid excessive pitches

Social media is primarily a place for people to observe, learn, and have fun. For this reason, you should typically promote your products by presenting them in fun, interesting, and creative ways. For example, try linking to an article on your company blog that has a highly engaging headline, then let readers know of a relatable product that aligns with their interests. Moreover, make sure that the majority of your social updates are not directly selling a product.

Provide exclusive benefits

Having an active, lively social network account allows you to create a tight-knit community, which opens the doors to certain consumer benefits. Post exclusive offers that are available only via social networks, provide a code that shoppers can use for a discount on online and in-store purchases, and periodically reveal coupon codes to your followers. Accompany these deals with a sense of urgency, granting them only for a limited amount of time.

Run an advertising campaign

Due to increased competition, running an advertising campaign may be ideal for reaching your target audience and establishing new leads. Set a monthly advertising budget around your target demographics, track your conversion rates, and tweak the campaign according to results. For instance, using the aforementioned discount tactics could potentially boost your following and help sell more products as a result.

Retain your audience

Establish other ways to reach your social media prospects to streamline communication and potential sales. Occasionally invite your followers to sign up for your company newsletter for periodic updates that resonate with their needs and interests. This is especially useful with existing customers, as they may be more inclined to buy additional products because they have already had a positive experience with your offers.

Social media can be a viable and cost-effective venue for selling your products. Start with these tips, and consider using Vionic, which grants The UPS Store customers up to 52 percent off on powerful marketing software for platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Six Summer Success Strategies for Your Small Business

The summer season opens up opportunities for some types of small businesses. For others, however, summer months can lead to fewer customers and lower profits. Regardless of what type of business you own, the following success strategies can effectively help generate sales and visibility, even among those who are not generally familiar with your products and services.

1. Revamp your social media strategy

Though customers may not visit your business often, they are still active via social media, making your products one tap or click away. It is not only important to post new updates more frequently, but it is also crucial to know when your audience is more likely to be active online. Gather basic insights, such as traffic statistics and engagement rates, to help make social media interactions more effective.

Slower summer months might also be a great time to get acquainted with other social platforms you have been considering. Analyze the audience on these platforms, evaluate which channel is the right fit for your business and add it to your overall marketing mix for greater impact.

2. Focus on networking

Networking opportunities are available almost everywhere. Aside from more formal events, casual summer gatherings also offer subtle opportunities to let people know about your small business. Other ways to meet new faces in the summertime include sporting events or localized online platforms like Meetup. In the end, spreading the word about your business will help you gain loyal customers.

3. Leverage promotions

Limited-time deals and promotions are popular for a reason, and they can be particularly powerful in driving sales during slower summer months. Regardless of how busy a customer may be, ignoring a great opportunity is almost always difficult.

Success strategies may include "buy one, get one free" deals or discounts on select goods and services. You could also create a referral program in which you lower a product's price for anyone who brings in a new customer. The right summer sales strategy can help maintain, or improve, a healthy profit margin.

4. Leverage contests and freebies

Similarly to promotional incentives, contests and free gifts generally do a good job of drawing attention. They can also help generate buzz through word-of-mouth marketing, depending on the products and services offered.

For instance, you could launch a giveaway with easy admission requirements, such as leaving a comment on social media or texting a phone number between certain hours. You could also provide a free item one day of the week to select customers or those involved in a particular membership. Do not forget to routinely advertise these freebies on your website and via your newsletter campaign. For help creating and managing an e-mail or newsletter marketing campaign, check out Act! Essentials.

5. Update existing properties

Look into your existing offerings and revamp them. For instance, could your company blog use a makeover? Do your online products need fresh images or more detail? Prioritize the accessibility of your existing properties, and make it easy to find your contact information.

Likewise, take some time to clean up or optimize your e-mail campaign or add more creativity to your social media profiles. Keeping everything up-to-date or embracing a fresh, new look could draw potential customers who might otherwise dismiss your business.

6. Launch that new idea

Perhaps you have been considering the launch of a new project or service. On the other hand, you may want to develop a new marketing strategy or experiment with various online advertising campaigns. Look into your company's wish list and implement a few new ideas during the summer months. This should help to bring in new sales and improved business.

The summer months do not have to cause worry in regard to your business's profits and overall growth. Implementing the right success strategies along with careful analysis can help sustain—or improve—your success during these unpredictable times.

Grow Your Social Media Presence: 6 Unconventional, Powerful Resources

It is no secret that having a great social media following is becoming increasingly important for businesses in nearly every industry. And while you can certainly do well with a smaller, niche audience, you should always strive to attract more followers and subscribers. Here are some unconventional resources and tactics you can use to grow your social media presence.

1. Advertise through your apparel

According to a study by Funders and Founders, the average person meets approximately 80,000 people over the course of his or her life. Why not leverage your daily interactions by using your apparel to get your name out there? Print your social media handle on hats, shirts, or other appropriate merchandise as a way to advertise your brand when you are running errands or working out at the gym. In an effort to attract the ideal prospect, you can even add a succinct one-liner that describes your business.

2. Use your vehicle as a billboard

As a small business owner, you can use your car as a moving billboard that calls attention to your social media accounts and your company as a whole. When using this method, make sure that your text is large enough so that other drivers can read your advertisement with ease. As the average driver travels an estimated 13,476 miles per year (according to the Federal Highway Administration), advertising on your car allows you to reach prospects in your local market on a daily basis.

3. Leverage your competition

Your competitors can actually help your business flourish in unexpected ways. As a small business owner, it is valuable for you to interact with your rivals' existing followers by resharing a relevant comment or by engaging them in conversation. Additionally, spying on your competition can help you to improve your own social media strategy. Ask yourself: Is your competitor's following larger than yours? If so, why? Do your competitors receive greater attention by writing a certain type of content, using more multimedia or posting at a specific time of day? These are just some of the many questions that can ultimately help you determine how to grow your social media presence.

4. Use powerful aggregation tools

With the vast amount of social networks available today, keeping up with each platform can be difficult. Growing your social media presence requires consistency, and this is where mass social aggregators come in. Tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social allow you to manage all your social media profiles from a single dashboard, and even schedule updates at timed intervals. Moreover, their detailed analytics reports give you the power to measure your social performance and make smarter marketing decisions as your audience grows.

5. Contribute to charitable organizations

Working with a charitable organization is one of the most meaningful and rewarding things you can do as a small business owner. As an added bonus, these partnerships are a great way to spread the word about your brand.

Perhaps your company could sponsor a local soup kitchen event or clothing drive. By doing so, you could truly make a difference in your community. Ask the organizations you work with to tag you in relevant social media posts to create community goodwill. At the same time, you could leverage any print or online materials regarding the event to expose potential customers to your company. For example, you could get your logo on the official event website to link to your social media profiles, which could help you connect to a new audience.

6. Take advantage of online venues

While exploring unconventional resources is always ideal, you should not neglect the many smaller, laser-targeted communities that flourish online. Dig deeper into social media by interacting in various niche corners, including Facebook and LinkedIn groups, as well as forums where your audience tends to spend time online. As more people join your social media community, you will have more opportunities to engage with potential customers regarding special deals and promotions.