I'm sorry, I'm sure this idea/post is valid, but damnit if this isn't exactly what the recent HBO show "Silicon Valley" lampooned in the finale.
I cannot stop laughing.
Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill
141–150 of 276 posts
Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill
#142Spot-heating, especially within a leaky building envelope utilizing expensive heat sources (electric resistance) is one option. But it's hardly the only one, or the best. For northern climates, taking a whole-system approach to home/structure design gets you a tremendously greater payoff in terms of energy savings. Among the most powerful demonstrations of this I've seen are Thorsten Chlupp / Reina LLC's experiences…
I live in southeast Alaska, where heating issues can make or break your ability to pay rent or afford a mortgage. Most homes are heated using fuel oil. We moved into an awesome old house last summer, and we were worried about heating costs. The landlord had a heat pump installed last fall. I'm sure we would have had some $300-$500 heating bills (per month) last winter if we were using oil, but the heat pump never cos…
Ground Loop or air to air heatpump? What brand and model?
(I ask because we just bought a house in montana and are thinking about a heatpump before winter...we have propane radiant heat now. We'd want one that would work with cold temps though it rarely gets bellow -10 F here.)
Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill
#143Tom Murphy has done a couple of blog posts on this exact thing: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/heat-those-feet/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/05/burning-desire-f...
Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boiling water produces a lot of waste heat. I'm inclined to believe an electric blanket is pretty good comparatively. Of course my house is all electric, so there are no electric vs. natural gas conversions to make.
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.
Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorta like when people order whatever they want for lunch, because they bought high quality calorie offsets?
At sufficient exercise levels most people have trouble eating enough. 10,000 calories every day tends to be a lot of food.
Even if you're doing a couple hours of intense exercise every day, you're only going to be adding on the order of 1000 Calories to your daily usage. Resting burn for most adults is around 1500-2000, so that's ~3000. What do you consider "sufficient" exercise?
Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the energy cost of making a CFL bulb vs. an incandescent? Also since in practice they don't last a lot longer, and are annoyingly dim for the first few minutes, and are considered an hazardous waste when you need to dispose of them, why does it make sense to replace a $0.50 bulb that has none of those issues with a $5.00 bulb that does?
CFL is crap, use LED lights. Last 20x longer with 1/20th the energy use. Replacing incandescent with CFL is a wash, replacing them with LED is a no-brainer.
Much more attractive too, if you prefer a redder (more like incandescent) light indoors. Modern LED bulbs are really good.
Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Voted down, then responding in case you don't know why: this is a discussion about micro-heaters. Yes, it's a bit disagreeable to run across even minor, aside comments that disagree with something you believe strongly, but please just deal with that on your own time. Because of course your comment will be unpleasant for people to read who feel just as passionately that you're wrong, and some of them may be compelled…
PS, this, "Voted down, then responding in case you don't know why" is passive aggressive.
Sorry, it's not the intended vibe -- people complain when they're voted down w/o explanation, so I'm trying to avoid that.
I mostly want to improve future discussions, not scold/shame people; my own posts aren't always on-topic and informative, though I like the goal.
Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill
#148Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill
#149A similar project is being done by the Senseable Cities Lab at MIT:
Local Warming: http://senseable.mit.edu/local-warming/
Re: Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in Copenhagen, and it's also bizarro world for me. :) But mainly because electricity is very expensive here, whereas district heating (hot water produced by municipal plants, which you can draw through your radiator if you'd like) is quite cheap. It would be hard to beat the costs of district heating using a space-heater approach, even given better spatial concentration of the heat.
Wait a minute you get hot water from the pipe instead of heating it yourself? That's interesting.
Most large buildings in the parts of China that I've visited (4 different regions of the country) use government supplied central heating (hot water I think). Interestingly this supply is turned on in the fall based on local policy, which is often driven by economics and politics, So it's not uncommon for people to not get the heat turned on until much later in the year than anyone would really like... :)