Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill

Post by jtheory » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 3:30 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #215

jtheory wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't use boiling water with hot water bottles; the ones you can buy have warnings about this (it can damage them). Just use hot water from the tap (which hopefully should be more efficiently heated than however you boil water as well). Don't worry about energy consumption; it's negligible for the hot water bottle, and for the electric blanket as well, especially compared to keeping your house heat up high at night.…

If the bottles are dedicated to this use, it's fine. The soft-walled ones may discolour slightly.

Post by jtheory » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 3:35 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #210

jtheory wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my comment you're responding to, but it's not talking about PV for heating (that'd be kind of ridiculous, honestly). Systems for heating water/air using solar can be quite inexpensive as well; converting light to heat is rather easier than converting it to electricity. E.g., I've seen cheap pool-heating systems that just pump the water through wide flattened black pipes exposed to the sun and send it back into th…

Yeah my second sentence was a non sequitur, but my point was: you can only do a little with solar/water heating. Yes heating a pool is one of those things, but that's a very niche application. This thread is about heating a house, or at least about being comfortable in one, and solar/water is just not a viable technology for that in the vast majority of cases.

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 3:52 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #249

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting in heat over a short time, to recover from low temperatures, is different to putting in heat over an extended period. If your heater has very low efficiency at high heat output then it seems highly possible that extended low output could be better. It's a financial efficiency we're talking about primarily when people are looking to more efficiently heat their house. If you're heating with electric for example…

Virtually all thermostat-controlled heating systems I've seen don't have different output levels, but are just on or off. So poor efficiency at high output wouldn't come into play. The rest is possible, but I'd file using expensive electricity instead of cheap electricity under the thermostat not doing a very good job, or more precisely the person setting it up not doing a good job of setting it up to run more cheapl…

Post by joezydeco » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 4:10 PM UTC

jay-saint wrote: post #223

jwmerrill wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your theoretical analysis misses an important physical fact: houses are able to exchange air with the outside world, not just heat. As you heat a normal room, it will expel air in order to maintain constant pressure, and similarly, as you allow a room to cool, outside air will enter again to keep the pressure constant. There was an article about this in the American Journal of Physics [1, 2] a couple years back, and…

I have been told by multiple HVAC professionals recently that one should keep their fan on their system always running. They have in fact adopted this practice at our offices and it greatly help with keeping temperatures in consistent from room to room. The arguments they provided for this were: [1] Constant air flow creates more consistent temperatures (less highs and lows from interior to exterior or floor to floor…

Post by voidlogic » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 4:27 PM UTC

TD-Linux wrote: post #23

voidlogic wrote: post #7

>In June of 2010 I moved to a place in Montana with only electric heat. Living that far north and depending on one heat source is crazy! Think about the power going out when its -30 out... or if you used gas, running out or having your furnace break down. (Not to mention electric is usually the most expensive way to heat). Most houses where I live have 2 or 3 heat sources. I have wood, LP and electric...

I lived in Minnesota and had only electric heat. Most other houses have only gas heat, and it usually requires electricity to run. Luckily the electricity is pretty reliable. If you do lose heat, the solution is generally to use blankets outdoor gear until it is fixed. But this has never happened in my 20 or so years of living there.