Comments on: Saving Pennies or Dollars? Space Heaters

By: steve in w ma

steve in w ma — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:53:24 +0000

You don’t need a sleeping room to be warm. I normally sleep in a 45-50 F deg room in the winter. A light continuous polysester comforter or two on the bed and you’ll be totally comfortable at that temperature range. Also, if you’re sitting on a couch reading, working on a laptop, or watching tv, just throwing a sleeping bag or comforter over you will keep you very comfortable in a mid-40 deg room.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:53:25 +0000

I like 65 during waking hours and 60 at night. We get a lot of solar gain from our south-facing windows during the day, that 65 can turn into 70 with no furnace help on a cloudless day when we bake something for dinner. Still my wife would prefer it to be warmer :)
It is incredible how fast you can adjust to temperature change though, I almost break into a sweat at my in-law’s house where it is 70F around the clock and they run a humidifier too. I agree with #33 Jane about turning up the heat when company comes over, as a courtesy.

By: Sara

Sara — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 14:43:45 +0000

When I bought my house, the builder told me not to set the thermostat any lower than 55°F in order to avoid the risk of pipes freezing. I keep mine at 56°F during the winter. I have natural gas heat, and my all-time highest monthly gas bill was $128, which is less than $5/day (and that is inflated because it was based on estimated usage, and my actual usage was lower).

By: Smythe

Smythe — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 22:14:42 +0000

I’ve tried 60 degrees indoors and it’s just too uncomfortable. I settled on 65 degrees when we’re home, and 55 degrees when we leave the house and during sleeping hours. After some deliberation I decided against space heaters for reasons of up-front costs, safety, and practicality. I use an electric blanket though and love it.

By: AnnJo

AnnJo — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 21:29:07 +0000

@34, KC,

I have a woodstove in the kitchen/family room area that also heats (and usually overheats) the upstairs master bedroom.

Last winter I compared the cost of heating with the type of wood available to me by the cord (fir and alder) versus my other option, electric wall units, and determined that on a per-BTU basis, wood was a little cheaper.

But keeping a wood stove going full-time and especially controlling its output to keep a stable temperature, is not always easy. It needs to be tended. We use it now only when we get a particularly cold spell or when the power goes out.

By: KC @ PsychoMoney

KC @ PsychoMoney — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 13:53:48 +0000

Electricity is to expensive in New York. We have a number of zones in our house that we can turn on and off. It saves a lot letting some areas of the house get cold and only heating the places we stay.

We also found putting in a wood burning stove or pellet stove saved a lot more money as well. I am sure it would not take that long to payback the initial cost depending on your situation. Especially if you are in that room most of the time.

By: Jane

Jane — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:45:14 +0000

I always find it really interesting how much people’s thermostat setting varies across this country. I personally like 68 degrees, although even with that I still get cold if I am sitting for a longer period. I used to be a real grinch about heat and insist that we keep it at 63 during the day and 55 at night, but now that we have kids, we’ve raised it. It’s 63 at night and 68 during the day. If you keep your thermostat lower than 68 degrees, I definitely think you should have the courtesy to raise it when you have company. Lots of people aren’t used to anything under 70 degrees. I was annoyed at my mother, because she had some elderly women over for lunch once and left her thermostat at its regular 63 degrees. They were probably very uncomfortable.

Since we installed a new high efficiency gas furnace, I’ve noticed that we can keep our thermostat higher and still pay less than we used to. This is very nice, because it allows me to not feel as guilty about keeping the house at a comfortable temperature.

We are avid space heater users, but I don’t necessarily think it saves us money. But when I go to take a shower or to put the kids to bed, it’s just easier to turn on the space heater in the room for a few minutes than to go downstairs to the thermostat to raise it.

By: Gretchen

Gretchen — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:14:52 +0000

If he is talking about totally electric, forced hot air is indeed very inefficent.

By: Maya

Maya — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:13:23 +0000

I had the opposite experience as Trent, although maybe it’s due to degrees. When we first decided to lower the thermostat from 65 to 60 we got a space heater for the bedroom. The plan was for my husband to turn it on at 5am when he left for work so that I wouldn’t be so cold as to not be able to get out of bed at 7am. Once I was up and dressed, I turned off the space heater. Our hope was that running a space heater for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week would be cheaper than keeping the thermostat at 65. But what happened was that our electric usage went up and our gas usage (for the furnace) barely changed. Maybe if we had made a larger change to the thermostat, and hadn’t been living in an uninsulated leak bucket with single-paned aluminum frame windows, the story would have been different.

By: valleycat1

valleycat1 — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:00:03 +0000

AnnJo & jim, I had some questions about Trent’s calculations too, after running his numbers through a calculater I found online – a cost of heating worksheet (that’s the Google term I used). I couldn’t get the #s to jibe with what he came up with.

By: jim

jim — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:47:14 +0000

AnnJo, You’re right about the math. I believe instead of 75kwh it should be 7.5 kwh.

1500 W x 10 minutes = .25kwh
300W x 24 hours = 7.2kwh
total = ~7.5kwh

Maybe the 75kwh total came from addding in the amount his furnace runs in that same time. I assume he doesn’t simply use a little spaceheater sparingly and turn off the furnace all together. (?)

By: Carlos

Carlos — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:34:14 +0000

Having lived in Japan for many years, we didn’t have central heating. We actually used kerosene stoves (much more advanced than the ones here). For the family room, we had a low table. Over this table was a large blanket. We sit under this table with our feet and draw the blanket up. Under the table is a special radiant heater. This is called a kotatsu. TO buy an imported one is $$$. I have pondered building one. It is very warm. Of course, we also have split air A/C that go in the ceiling (towards the top). They heat and cool.

I recommend everyone get an energy audit… often at a discount with your local utility. Find out where you are losing heat. Consider spending the money on a high efficiency furnace. Warp your duct with TekFoil Foil Insulation. Seal your cracks with Handi-Foam. Check your weather stripping. Add plastic to your windows during the window for an added thermal barrier. Check out some thermal greenhouse plastic film which is more rugged than the cheap big box store stuff. Keep your curtains closed. For large windows, get thermal curtains. Wear more layers. Get a programmable thermostat… they are cheap. After living overseas, I have to say we have become pretty wasteful of energy here.

By: Johanna

Johanna — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:02:46 +0000

Good catch on the math, AnnJo. I should know better by now than to skim over Trent’s numbers without questioning them.

By: AnnJo

AnnJo — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:35:47 +0000

For those who shiver at the idea of a 60 degree house temp, it’s really a matter of returning to some of the techniques our grandparents or great-grandparents used to keep warm.

That temperature can be perfectly comfortable if you’re dressed for it. If I’m home for the day in the winter, I’m wearing silk long-sleeved longjohn tops and bottoms, under a fleece or wool shirt and pants, and Costco’s wonderful merino wool socks. I keep a light wool scarf around my neck and if I am sitting for a long time and start to feel cold, I might bring it up over my head.

Every chair and sofa has a throw of some kind on it and we use them. When I boil water for coffee, tea or cocoa, I might fill a hot water bottle with the extra water and put it on my lap if I’m sitting or in the bed if I’m going to bed.

It’s just a slightly different way of living, and once you get used to it, it’s perfectly comfortable.

By: AnnJo

AnnJo — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:08:37 +0000

Maybe i’m making some elementary mistake, but Trent’s math seems way off to me.

A 1,500 watt heater, even running full-blast for a full 24 hours, will use only 36 KWH. The way Trent describes his usage can’t possibly add up to 75 KWH.

Where I live, the electricity price is about 8.3 cents per KWH, or just under $3 for a full day of full-blast 1,500 watt heating. I don’t see how it can possibly cost $9 a day for Trent to run his heater the way he describes. Even at 12 cents per KWH, which I believe is more common outside the Bonneville Power area, it’s probably costing him less than $3 a day if he’s running it at 300 watts most of the time.

By: Jeannine

Jeannine — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:47:20 +0000

Let’s just say that I wouldn’t want to put my heinie on the toilet seat in the part of the house that doesn’t stay warm all day. Sometimes there is a limit to being frugal – everyone has to find their own.

By: jim

jim — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:28:19 +0000

It sounds like Trent has an electric forced air furnace. My house has the same type of heat. Electric heat is less common in colder climates because its more expensive. Electric heating systems are more common in warmer or milder climates where heat isn’t used as much.

Trent is paying $12 for 100kWh of heat. That would put out about 341k btu. You can get that amount of btu from a 90% gas furnace with about $4 in natural gas. So it would cost about 33% as much to heat that home with a natural gas furnace.

Its possible that natural gas service isn’t available where Trent lives. Otherwise the home builder really cheaped out with the electric furnace and lack of gas given the cold climate in Iowa. Propane heat might be a feasible alternative in that situation. Cost for propane would be roughly halfway between electric and gas around $8 for 341k btu.

By: Vicky

Vicky — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:31:52 +0000

I used to do this when I lived in Oklahoma. Where I live now, um, yeah, I let it get do 60 degrees. I’m perfectly fine in pajama pants and tops, sometimes a robe, slippers, and throws on the couch. It makes the dogs extra cuddly.

Oh, and sometimes… if the oven is dirty… I’ll … clean the oven. Because it heats up the whole house! But that’s a very rare occasion, and I’m not sure it would save money, but if it were dirty… yeah.

By: Baley

Baley — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:24:30 +0000

For clarification: we did find a cool-to-the-touch space heater that has an automatic switch off feature in case it falls over, so I’m not concerned about its safety, though we wouldn’t leave it around the baby unattended. Also, maybe I like it warmer because I’m from Tennessee. I keep trying to turn the thermostat down, but then I get cold and turn it back up. So, I’m trying to save energy, but I’d rather be comfortable. Thanks for all the tips! :)

By: Gretchen

Gretchen — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:21:25 +0000

With 3 cats, this isn’t even a debate for us and I’m surprised it is with the three small children as well.

The 25 W furnace thing makes no sense.