50kWh and closer to 90kWh on days like this. It’s a log cabin and I’m keeping my root cellar and shed above freezing aswell
MaxHardwood@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
How are you using 21kWh/day heating a small home? Do you have any insulation at all?
Critical_Insight@feddit.uk 8 months ago
bastion@feddit.nl 8 months ago
A tiny heater running all day would do that.
1kw is a small heater. 0.8kw is a tiny one. 0.8x24 is 19.2. Assuming they have other basic appliances, that’s already more than enough to account for their usage.
Agent641@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I like to keep my bedroom a cosy 1600 degrees C
june@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’ve got a small 1200w heater that kicks on in the morning to bring the living room space up to 69. I live in a 40 year old house that’s insulated fairly well (I just had the attic redone last year to r-49) and it’s 45f outside right now. That little heater has used 6kWh since kicking on this morning getting the house up from 63f to the near 69 it is now.
On a day below freezing that heater will got for a lot longer through the day to keep temps up.
chitak166@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Space heaters are the way to go.
It’s the difference between paying $50 and $5 more per month.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 8 months ago
What are you smoking? Space heaters gulp down electricity with the smallest ones running at hundreds of watts and standard ones around 1-2 kilowatts. The only ways a space heater is more efficient is if either you’re spending a shitton of energy heating rooms you aren’t in or if your homes heating system is in bad need of repair/replacement
chitak166@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Well, my electric bill went up a negligible amount and I keep the space heater running pretty much all the time.
Maybe you bought a shitty one or you’re getting a shitty deal for your electricity.
butterflyattack@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Space heaters are one of the most expensive methods. Check the power consumption, they are hungry things.
chitak166@lemmy.world 8 months ago
My electric bill says otherwise.
As always, I encourage people to see for themselves rather than trusting strangers on the internet.
psud@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The only time space heaters work well is when you avoid heating the whole house, and instead heat only a room
chitak166@lemmy.world 8 months ago
No shit.
agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 8 months ago
You don’t exactly understand heat pumps, do you?
A space heater has an efficiency of close to 100%, heat pumps have at worst 100% and at best somewhere between 300 and 500%. Granted, in -35C environments, it’s probably very close to 100%, but that’s the absolute worst case, and an anomaly even in Finland.
AreaKode@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Heat pumps aren’t designed to function in this low of temperature. The problem is they need a real heater instead of a heat exchanger.
Critical_Insight@feddit.uk 8 months ago
This is such an outdated information. Modern heatpumps work just fine even in temperatures of -20C and below. Ofcourse the efficiency gets worse the colder it is but even at worst it’s still 100% efficient. On a typical year there’s only a handful of really cold days. It doesn’t make sense not to get a heatpump just because it’s inefficient for few days. It’s not like it stops heating or something. It just effectively turns into electric radiator which is what my house was heated with before I got the heatpump anyways.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This is true only if you have a heat pump with electric/resistive backup heat. But for some reason, it’s pretty easy to buy one in the US that doesn’t. (Which is where I assume that poster is, because most anti-heat-pump sentiment seems to come from here.)
bluewing@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I live in a very cold part of the world where the temps can easily exceed your -20C for night times for several weeks at a time. And even as the daily high for a week stretch or two over a winter. And while I could have purchased a heat pump that would work to that low of a temperature, it would have cost over twice the price. Going from $5000US installed to over $10,000US for just the heat pump. And that included the rebate incentives.
My heat pump is set to set to cut out and switch to LP heat at -10C because it becomes cheaper to run an LP furnace at that point - cost of electricity = 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour vs $1.75US gallon LP. The loss of efficiency matters to my pocket book. And I chose my particular heat pump with my advice of my Daughter who has a PhD in ME and works as a research engineer for a non-profit studying HVAC systems and the efficiencies of the technology used in them. And she won’t install a heat pump in her house because for where she lives, they literally do not make financial sense. There is zero savings to be had with switching from natural gas heat to electric.
So installing a heat pump is not a universal no brainer. You still need to to the math to see if it pays.
Critical_Insight@feddit.uk 8 months ago
Yeah obviously it’s a whole different game when you live in a place like that. That’s just quite rare usecase. The vast majority of people who keep repeating the “heatpumps don’t work in cold climates” lives in a climate much warmer than I do. Even mine struggles on the few really cold days we get few times a year but that’s fine because it gets the job done flawlessly for the remaining 350 days.
Socsa@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I am also an engineer and used to have LP backup heat and the only way the LP is cheaper per BTU is if you rapidly deprecate the asset.
A gallon of propane has 91,000 BTU, and a kW of electricity has 3400 BTU. 91k/3.4k ~ 26kWh x 0.065 = $1.73 for electricity equivalent at 1.0 coefficient of performance. But your COP is likely around 2-3, so the heat pump will be at least 2x cheaper than the LP.
The_v@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Not quite, in my experience on really cold days my heat pump struggles to keep up. This is expecially true when the outside unit is frosting up. The unit has to reverse and pump heat out of the house.
That’s one of the reasons i run my wood pellet stove on those days. The secondary source of heat takes the load off the heat pump.
Critical_Insight@feddit.uk 8 months ago
Sure, but as I said it’s just a handfull of days in a year. If the heatpump alone struggles to keep my house warm I can just switch on one or two electric radiators.
dan@upvote.au 8 months ago
In an area that gets very cold, a geothermal heat pump (which uses the ground rather than the air for heat exchange) would work better than an air-source heat pump. More expensive to install though, and you need a good amount of land
Socsa@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Most heat pumps will use the aux coils to defrost. It’s also ok for the best pump to literally run 24/7 if it needs to. A lot of people freak out when the heat pump runs all day and blows “cool” 80F at from the vents, but it’s still working as intended. Though I totally get how that can make a place feel “drafty” without some backup running
MyEdgyAlt@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
It’s true they’re at worst 100% efficient, but they’re also typically sized lower than resistive electric heaters in terms of input power. In the US, a residential heat pump likely draws about 4kW, whereas resistive heat strips or baseboard heating could be multiples of that. As an air source heat pump’s output drops on very cold days, a unit rated for e.g. 48000BTU/hr at 47°f might produce only half of that at 5°f/-15c. A “good” unit here would produce perhaps 75%. The way we do HVAC sizing, unless you radically oversized the system for most weather (including air conditioning) you’ll need a backup source of heat on the coldest days.
Code (law specifying how much heating / cooling capacity is required in normal worst-case weather conditions) where I live would require me to use about 2x the normal sizing to achieve pure heat pump heating at the required design temperature (around 5f/-15c). That means at the peak of summer (about 100f/38c) the unit would be operating at less than half of its full cooling capacity.
Apologies for weird units; I live in MAGAland.
MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
They work, but efficiency is near 1:1 when it’s that cold so there’s no cost advantage over a space heater.
Critical_Insight@feddit.uk 8 months ago
It’s non-sensical to base the cost effectiveness of a heat pump on the handful of really cold days when it’s no more efficient than electric resistive heating. You have to take into account the entire heating season. Electric resistive heating is allways 100% efficient. Air sourced heat pump is 100% efficient in the worst possible conditions. In normal conditions it’s 3 to 5 times more efficient. While your 650 watt space heater puts out heat at the constant rate of 650 watts, a heat pump outputs 3000 watts worth of heat while using that same 650 watts of energy.
JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world 8 months ago
There are heat pumps that exchange heat with the ground. Those can function well in more extreme temperatures. Also you could/should have alternative heating methods for extreme situations even if they are much more inneficient
Fosheze@lemmy.world 8 months ago
In colder areas like that the heat pumps are usually ground source so the ambient air temperature doesn’t change the performance much.
bluewing@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Have you actually priced such systems and the payback time vs heat pumps vs petroleum sourced heat?
I know one person who chose a mix of ground heat pump, LP, and wood heat. He told me that it only had a reasonable payback was because he was building a new home and the extra cost could be tagged to the total build cost. Making it cheaper than a retro fit. He said it added another $25,000 to the cost of his new home. But in fairness, he does enjoy it.
Fosheze@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I only do the refrigeration side of things and I don’t do residential stuff so I’m not sure on exact pricing. Pricing will also vary greatly depending on the exact area. For example in my area we have a high enough ground water level that open loop geothermal is easy and that is the cheapest/easiest method of geothermal. The other types will also vary in cost depending on soil type and moisture content because that will partially dictate how big of a ground loop you need. The amount of area you have for a ground loop will also be a big factor because if you don’t have enough yard area for a horizontal loop then you need to use a vertical loop which can be heniously expensive.
As far as payback goes they are far more expensive to install regardless of the type but the ground loop (assuming closed loop system) can easily last over 50 years and that is the most expensive part of the whole system by a large margin. Out of the $25,000 you mentioned I would bet that about $20,000 of that was just for the ground loop. The rest of the system is going to be more durable as well due to not being outdoors. The expected lifespan of the other components is 20 years and they can easily last far longer than that. So the energy savings is only part of the cost savings. The other part is that geothermal heat pumps need practically no maintenance and break down far more rarely than any other conventional heating or cooling solution. With how long they last and how durable they are a geothermal heat pump can probably pay itself off just with avoided service calls.
GiddyGap@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Outer walls in new homes in the Nordic countries are often 25-30 inches thick filled with insulation. They will keep out some cold (and some heat).
Blackmist@feddit.uk 8 months ago
Probably because it’s about -35C outside.
Dude is basically living on the set of The Thing at this point.