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.
Jazsta@lemmy.world 8 months ago
All space heaters operate at the same efficiency since they convert electricity to heat via resistance. You may have a small one and low electricity rates in your area to see a negligible change. Or maybe other uses went down and masked the increase from the space heater usage.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 8 months ago
Bruh I don’t think you understand how electricity consumption works.
A space heater will pull a given wattage, say 1000 watts for a pretty common one. Electric heaters are 100% efficient meaning 100% of the energy going in is converted to heat, so running that 1000 watt space heater for 1 hour will consume 1000 watt-hours (or 1 kilowatt hour) and heat the space by exactly 1000 watts or 1 kilowatt (kilo meaning thousand)
Plugging this into a electric bill calculator, at a common $0.15/kWh running that 1000 watt space heater 24/7 will cost about $100 per month
If your space heater is so insanely awesome, please do tell me, what’s your electric rate and the wattage of the heater?
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.