cheapest way to heat this year?

well they always say to use gas.but this year they say gas willl cost a lot! plus my gas heater is for the whole house.central heat id say a 25 year old furnace .would i be smarter to by a small electric heater for my room,i spend 95% a time in room only spend like 20 minutes per day in liveing room .my bathroom is in my bedroom so will small good newer type electirc space heater be smart they run like 1500 watts. id only keep it like at 68f.

I would wait and see. I have been hearing the same thing regarding gas costs but who knows........

I would wait and see if the gas prices soar and when they do, maybe get the electric heater... remember, you'll still have to keep the gas heat on to keep the pipes from freezing up....

If your gas heater uses forced air vents to move the heat into the rooms then you might consider opening the vent in your bedroom all the way and closing all the others in the house by a small amount. Lower the theromstat like you planned and see how much warmer your bedroom is compared to the rest of the rooms. You might even be able to lower the thermostat a bit more. You could have your bedroom at 68-69 and the other rooms your not in too often at 66.

Yes you can save a lot by turning down the heat in the whole house and just heat one room with a space heater. I highly recommend those Oil filled radiator type space heaters. They are quiet, have no exposed elements and are ideal for a bedroom. I live in Canada and I use one in my bedroom for supplemental heat in the winter.

cool i do have all vents closed already but this one.i do have fireplace but its downstaires and the gas in it seems to be broke i guess thermal cople since pilot dont stay light.i hope its like the summer was this room was warmest .i think my gas bill is only 20 now and i have gas water heater and keep it on higest tempature.im lucky that i like cooler temps

That is the way my place is.... me and my roommate have the vents wide open and the rest of the house is shut down to near nothing.... when it is 70 in the rest of the house it is sometimes over 80 in my room and I have to open the door to let heat out. I could live with it cooler but I guess my roommate cannot. I would crank it down to 60 in the rest of the house except the bathroom which needs to be a little warmer for taking a shower.

HighLight said:

Yes you can save a lot by turning down the heat in the whole house and just heat one room with a space heater. I highly recommend those Oil filled radiator type space heaters. They are quiet, have no exposed elements and are ideal for a bedroom. I live in Canada and I use one in my bedroom for supplemental heat in the winter.

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cool i think my dad has one he dont use at his house and he will give it to me.this house is pretty good insulted way better then old house .its like 45 out side now and still like 67 ihere and im very cofy and i dont have heat on at all perhaps cause heat rises .but a course i here it also moves to the cold.

Anyone use a pellet furnace/stove instead of a regular one? I've heard that they're very inexpensive to operate.

Eat roast beef and wear a down insulated suit!


fleegs

We use two of the oil filled electrics in bedrooms and wood stove in liv room. Hardly ever use central heat. I got the heaters for $35 each. Best $70 I ever spent. Neighbor with smaller house pays three times more in winter utilities.

YMMV

Another thing that helps is using an electric blanket at night.

PhotonWrangler said:

Anyone use a pellet furnace/stove instead of a regular one? I've heard that they're very inexpensive to operate.

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I wonder if pellet fuel is avaliable in your area; I don't see it where I live.

I think it is similar to "manufactured" firewood (AKA Duraflame). Basically, it is composed of sawdust and wax. Most of them are made from recycled wood products or leftovers from sawmills.

There's a company that makes a retrofit burner basket that you can use in your existing fireplace or woodstove to burn pellets.

http://www.energex.com/


Too bad, my parents are scared of using any type of heating device (especially fireplaces) after a house up the street burned down about two years ago. It dosen't get too cold in So. California though.

Let's say one were going to purchase one of these "oil filled radiators", are there any particular brands that one should be looking at??

Pellet stoves are becoming more and more common. In the rural area where I grew up, I know several people now that use them. The pellet quality I believe, at least what my aunt uses, is primary hardwood based. It cost a little less then four dollars for a bag of pellets (you buy it by the ton which is several bags) and the stove will heat her whole house, particularly by keeping the bedroom doors open for about a bag a day. The pellets are fed to the stove by a hopper at a steady rate and it produces an even heat, not an up and down heat like a wood stove. But you want to have a battery back up for the hopper in case the power goes out. Also the stoves, at least the better ones, are kind of expensive. I think my aunt paid like $1200 for hers. Maybe you can get them cheaper but hers looks real nice.

Wood stoves are nice, especially for supplemental heat. My parents have an oil heated forced hot water heating system but have a wood stove in the cellar. If the stove is kept stoked up, it will prevent the oil heater from firing up in all but the coldest days. They pay $160 for a cord of green, split wood (buy in summer and let cure so will be dry by winter) and usually go thru about four cord a year but this is in the land of 20-30 below F in the winter.

When I lived in an apartment, I had one of those electric oil filled radiator heaters. They work pretty well, providing a more even heat then the ones that blow hot air but take a long time, a few hours, to warm the room up from a cold start. Also when I moved it to the living room, it didn't work nearly as well. They are limited in what they can do and work best in a smaller closed room like a bedroom.

Eat chilli. No, I don't mean the chili that you find in chili dogs with beans. I mean Asian-style chilli that burns at both ends (when it goes in and where it comes out). I recall there was one situation where I was freezing till I threw a generous dose in with my lunch, next thing I knew I was sweating like crazy and out there standing in the cold wind just to cool off.

Small electric heater works. The smaller the room, the better - because it has less space to heat. Put your computer in there, it has a dual purpose, because it lets you surf CPF and it generates heat. Quite a few years ago, I found that cranking up the CPU load on an AMD K6 or Pentium Pro (yes, I'm dating myself, aren't I?) would make the room a little bit warmer. These days, you have 80-watt P4s and AMDs which are nearly 100% efficient at turning electrical power into heat - you guys are spoiled! so load up your favorite distributed computing application to crank up the proc load and enjoy. I used to know some guys in Michigan who did just that (on their half dozen computers) when the weather got a little colder than usual.

I have a pellet stove, an Avalon Astoria. It has been GREAT. I highly recommend this to all here on CPF in need of a heat source. Some clarification:

• Pellets are hardwood dust only, no wax. Not the same as Duraflame.
• Pellets come in 40lb bags, 50 bags/ton.
• Pellets burn hotter than firewood because air is forced through them during combustion.
• Pellets produce virtually no ash or creosote. A ton of pellets (the equivalent to a 1.5 cords of wood) produces only one pan of ashes, collected inside the stove. You can go all winter and only empty the pan 2-3 times.
• Depending on model, the stove will run many many hours without refueling. Mine holds over 100lbs of pellets, which can be good for a 24 hour period on max output.
• Pellets are cleaner than wood. No dirt, bugs, etc. or going outside in cold weather for more fuel.
• Pellets are easier to store, as the are far more compact.
• Pellet stoves are furnace-rated, i.e. they can be left going safely in your home without you being there, like you do your oil/gas burner.
• Pellet stoves can have remote control and thermostatic functions (mine does). It also has timer functions, so you can get up in the AM to have it going or have it stop after bedtime.
• Pellet stove combustion is entirely a closed system, so there is virtually no smell of any kind.
• Pellet stoves heat metal tubes, which in turn have air blown through them, so they are kind of a hot air device. Because of this, 75%+ of the stove remains cool to the touch (good for kids). Only the front glass where the fire is visible gets hot.
• Because of the forced air heat (instead of radiant heat, like a fireplace/woodstove/radiator), it can be placed in close proximity to furniture, etc, without fear of heat damage.
• The stove runs very quietly, with just the quiet noise of the fans and the tinkling sound of pellets dropping into the firepot.
• Pellet stoves start automatically at the push of a button. They take approximately 15 mins to start the fire and come to temp. The starter is a metal prod that gets hot and brings the pellets to combustion. Hence, no starter/ignition flame or pilot necessary.
• Pellet stove efficiency is far greater than fireplaces, in the 85%+ range.

Like any furnace, though, pellet stoves require AC to operate the two fans (one for the firepot, the other to circulate the heat). I have my stove hooked up to a special failsafe that draws AC from a marine battery in the event of power failure. This is a great feature for anyone who's ever had a power outage in a storm. The battery will keep the stove going for a good many hours (15, I think). The device is called a Stove Sentry. It's good, because no power means I don't get any oil heat, which is what my house has as it's primary.

Capture your shower/bath water and let it cool completely before draining it out. It will add some heat to the room and will add humidity also.

It's free heat because you have already paid to heat the water. No sense letting it go to waste.

all very good ideas . realy preafre colder temps so im lucky in a way 50 is aweume for me .i just put on sweatshirt.like i said old house had no heat lol that was rough though cause it had holes and crack in house .am im so much more happy here lol.feel sorry for my roomate they still live there .

Ahh, so pellets are compressed and hardened sawdust only, no wax is used to hold it together. I always thought they had a binding agent like that :thanks:

I've only seen pictures of a pellet stove and a lot of them look very high tech in the way they have automatic ignition using a glow coil or hot air and automatic fuel feeding plus thermostats and other forms of controling the heat. What's the reliability of these units? I know most need electricity to run (well, you can always have a backup).

Of course, the simplest pellet burner I've seen is the Promethus burner basket I posted above. Although it lets you use pellet fuel in any wood burning appliance, the heat output may depend on how efficient your fireplace or woodstove is at giving out heat to the room. You also have to light it by hand (place some kindleing underneath the loaded basket and ignite) and add more pellets every few hours.

The strangest fuel I've seen is a manufactured firelog made from coffee grounds :wow: I heard it even burns hotter than sawdust based manufactured fuel

http://www.java-log.com/

Edit: Even stranger is the the talk of the hydrogen economy. Ever heard of using water for "fuel" ? I've known the company Heat-N-Glo for a long time (gas log sets) but check this out.

www.heatnglo.com (look for the Aqueon fireplace)

For reliability, I can only say my stove ran just about all day every day for 6 months with no problem. I would suggest that you get it serviced once per year, as you should any furnace.

I say the Prometheus, and am intruigued. I am thinking about getting one, as we have a small brick fireplace in our dining room. It would allow me to use the same fuel (pellets) for both stove and fireplace. Currently, we use Duraflame type logs for the occasion holiday and such, but they give off no heat to speak of. The Prometheus would do far better, I'm sure.