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Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill

richsoil.com

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Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill

#261

Good grief. If you live in a country that gets cold, learn to insulate your houses better. Seriously, it is that simple. /lives in a country where triple windows are standard for all new buildings intended for people.

I live in a larger house, being single any house is overkill but I went a bit beyond because of pricing and location. As such I have three bedrooms and two baths where the vents are kept closed. This does mean they seal completely so in winter the rooms can hit the 50s (F) on a below freezing week. You don't need to live in a cold climate to want good insulation, it can save a bundle in hot climates too if your a fan…

You might want to read this.

http://www.familyhandyman.com/smart-homeowner/energy-saving-...

Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill

#262
post #6

This is where I really prefer the European model[1] - you heat the whole house with hot water. You make hot water with cheap natural gas. If you're lucky enough, you can even use geothermal. Then you use insulation. This especially is something that feels nobody in the US has heard of. At least in California. As a result, your radiators are turned down to 2 out of 10 all day (heating turns off automatically overnight…

Forced air heat is a lot more common in the U.S. because we are further along on adopting air conditioning. If you put in ducts for AC, it's cheaper to use those to distribute heat. Upscale construction does seem to be adding radiant floor heat. Houses are generally pretty under-insulated though.

Air is a pretty bad transport agent for heat compared to water. To heat a house (and especially poorly insulated ones) the air either has to be rather hot or flow pretty fast. The former is not very comfortable because of the large temperature gradients and it can cause a 'scorched dust' smell. The latter is also not very comfortable when you're in the flow path, it's noisy and the increased flow of air in the room means more heat is escaping to outside.

It can work for well insulated and airtight houses but I'm not a fan (pun not intended) because you're tying two different functions (heating and ventilation) together.

Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill

#263

People should check out WattVision. It's a little device that attaches to your electrical meter so you can monitor your electrical usage. What I've found is that almost all of our home's electrical usage comes from heating (heaters, clothes dryers, and hot water). Everything else is almost a rounding error. For example: I saw almost no change when we switched from incandescents to LED lighting (even in the summer whe…

Totally heating dominate energy use. I'm rather disturb to hear people pay much attention to so call "phantom power" from idle electronics and adapters. Adapters plugged in the socket do not consume measurable power. Wifi router uses about a few watts. The worst offender is a set-top box that uses 18W irrespective of power on or off. It is piece of crap anyway so I unplugged it. All the electronics in the house proba…

I carefully measured everything in my household. Nothing come close to a space heater. Most small electronics use negligible amount of power. We should not need to pay any attention to them.

http://tungwaiyip.info/blog/2011/12/24/home_power_usage

There are probably a separate category of problematic electronics that really sucks power. I was offended to find my set-top box suck 18W. I am doubly offended by your array of Tivo boxes. For 40W, my laptop will be doing computation intensive task with the fan running loudly. My mac mini consume only 11W when idle. A big huge TV would use power. I only have a 32" TV and I use it only a few hours a day at most anyway.

Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill

#264
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when you live in a house where the internal climate is such that it will let mold grow, it's downright unhealthy to live there Why do you believe this?

http://www.cdc.gov/mold/dampness_facts.htm > In addition, in 2004 the IOM found sufficient evidence to link exposure to damp indoor environments in general to upper respiratory tract symptoms, cough, and wheeze in otherwise healthy people and with asthma symptoms in people with asthma. The IOM also found limited or suggestive evidence linking exposure to damp indoor environments in general to shortness of breath, to…

It seems worth pointing out that the last 75% of the text you quote amounts to saying "we couldn't document these risks, but we'd like to warn you about them anyway". The first part links mold to (1) symptoms you'll recognize if you have them, in healthy people, and (2) asthma, in people with asthma. This is not a strong case for environmental mold being dangerous.

Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill

#265
post #87

OK, Paul Wheaton simply doesn't know what he's talking about: "I think that this does produce some savings, but not as much as you might think. If you set your thermostat to a constant 70, the heater works a little at a time throughout the day. If you drop it to 50 at night or in the middle of the day, the heater stops working, but then when the time comes to warm the house again, the heater has to work at full power…

How much of this is thrown out the window when you have "peak pricing" for energy? Also, the "straightdope" link doesn't exactly dispute that setting the thermostat down is ultimately a much more modest ~6% energy savings on average. Nothing to scoff at, but ultimately you come out better by taking a holistic approach. If you can afford it, of course.

Peak pricing isn't particularly common in residential power metering, though I suppose it might arrive.

The answer would depend on your heating/cooling cycle and usage. Most usage peaks are bimodal: early morning and early afternoon. Those would tend to correspond to morning and evening heating peaks, assuming your residence is largely uninhabited during the day. Overnight demand is usually low.

This could lead to, say, greater use of steam/water heating using thermal storage. Heating a well-insulated water storage tank with off-peak energy, then transferring that to the structure when it's most needed, would be a form of demand averaging / peak shifting. Depending on the storage methods used, boiler explosions might become an increased risk.

If you're using direct-delivery methods, e.g., radiant electric heat as described here, peak pricing would make some of the options used less beneficial on a cost basis.

Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It probably depends on the water bottle. I put boiling water into a fairly thin-walled rubber one, and it sprang a leak a few minutes later, so I'm more careful now.

There's a reason I specified Nalgene.

Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasted heat? All the wasted heat goes into the air, warming up the room.

The room being the kitchen, which is not the room you're trying to heat up as you prepare for bed.

The egress path of that heat will tend to be dissipation throughout the habitable area, modulo circulation. One factor I've noted in room heating is how much heat tends to rise toward the ceiling. A vertically-oriented fan (need not be a ceiling fan) will help achieve a good blend of temperature floor-to-ceiling.

Air flows between rooms / through doorways can also be surprisingly stubborn, but it does happen.

The specifics will depend on the size of the interior space, position of the kitchen, access to exterior walls, etc.

Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vinegar is also excellent at combating mold (before it gets established), and is gentle on pretty much any surface. A 50-50 vinegar-water solution can simply be sprayed onto walls, floors, carpets, and other surfaces. Another is fully airing out a bathroom. I'll set a fan to move air until the walls and other surfaces are dry. Especially useful if you've got an interior bathroom. Otherwise, an openable window is high…

> I'll set a fan to move air until the walls and other surfaces are dry. // Aren't you just ensuring the whole house is damp then, unless your humidity is low enough in the first place I suppose.

No, though generally I'm not in environments where thermal control is a major concern, so the interior tends to be well-ventilated.

They key is to understand that a shower is essentially a big humidity generator. So you want to shower with internal doors closed, but external windows open, if they're available. Otherwise you're simply pumping moisture into the residence. Once you've completed your shower, you're no longer introducing more moisture into the environment, so removing / diluting what you've got is the key.

An exhaust fan is also useful, though most are relatively low-flow -- this is one element where if I am designing my own structure I'd have a high-capacity, high-flow, and if at all possible, quiet, fixture. A typical 100 CFM fan will require over 5 minutes to achieve a 100% exchange of air within even a modest-sized bathroom, say 6' x 12' x 7.5'. They'll rarely keep up with the generation of humidity during a shower. The real key is that a high-mounted fan removes the moist air that pools above your door jamb.

The situation also depends on whether you're in a warm or cold, heating, cooling, or ambient, and humid or dry environment.

In cold-weather winter climates, your usual problem is that interiors are too dry, so your bathroom humidity is useful for interior comfort.

In a temperate/warm and humid environment, your main concern is venting the bathroom (first) followed by reducing standing moisture. And if it's humid enough that interior humidity is an issue I've likely got a dehumidifier for high-humidity periods.

My usual strategy (yes, I've got a bathroom venting strategy) is:

For an exterior bath or one with an openable skylight: shower with interior doors closed and the window open. Humidity is generated by tends to escape, keeping total build-up limited. I may or may not shower with the exhaust fan on, but always turn it on afterward, if only to evacuate high-rising moisture. Following shower, spray down shower doors/curtain and walls with vinegar or other (preferably organic) anti-microbial. If the area has higher humidity, a 14" floor fan is good to help evaporate standing water on floors or walls. Mildew tends to form most aggressively in areas in which water pools, and by removing that water and treating it to be inhospitable, you'll virtually eliminate any build-up.

For an interior bath, shower with the interior door closed. Exhaust fan is either on or turned on following the shower (much more out of concern for noise than energy -- most fans I've encountered are annoyingly loud as well as relatively ineffective). I'll crack the interior door to allow fresh air in for a minute or so, then swing it wide open.

Swirling a towel can help achieve a good vertical air mix (moist, warm air tends to rise), which levels out total humidity and eliminates high-humidity spots.

Spray walls and floors with vinegar mix, finish my grooming, then turn on a floor fan to remove additional standing moisture on walls / floor. Airing out bath mats also helps markedly.

Note that a bathroom is rarely more than 10% of your total interior area as well (and often less). So even dumping a 100% humid bath's air into your residence will tend to provide less than a ~10% boost in interior humidity. My experience is that air tends not to feel overly humid until it gets above 60-70% humidity, and that humidity tends to normalize fairly quickly over a larger area. The real threat is _standing_ water.

End result is that I very, very rarely have bathroom mildew issues, rarely use a chlorine-based mildew treatment (though I've got a spray bottle of bleach too that may get used 1-4x monthly), and spend only a few seconds a day dealing with the matter.

Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dehumidifiers are reasonably efficient, and in a cold-weather climate, the waste heat is actually a bonus as it contributes to interior heating.

They are only very efficient in warm temperatures. The colder it gets the harder the dehumidifier has to work and the less efficient it gets - as it operates based on a temperature differential. So I suppose, if you are running a dehumidifier in a cold room, you need to particularly consider how well it operates in cold, some dehumidifiers are particularly bad in that environment.

There are few cold-weather climates in which humidity is a significant concern, and heating tends to reduce absolute humidity.

What's the transition point below which efficiency is markedly reduced?

Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill

#270
post #115

OK, Paul Wheaton simply doesn't know what he's talking about: "I think that this does produce some savings, but not as much as you might think. If you set your thermostat to a constant 70, the heater works a little at a time throughout the day. If you drop it to 50 at night or in the middle of the day, the heater stops working, but then when the time comes to warm the house again, the heater has to work at full power…

Sure, if you have shitty insulation. The proper strategy is to have good insulation, and then to have the heat on constantly using a CV system at low temperatures, because heating constantly with water of 30 degrees (C, that is) is much more energy efficient than heating in peaks with much warmer water (60, 70, 90 even 20 years ago). So yes, in houses with crap insulation warming constantly is less efficient. However…

Hell, if you have good insulation, you don't really need any heating at all beyond that produced by cooking, lighting, and body heat of the occupants; except in really exceptional circumstances. You do need air exchange, preferably heat recovering.
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