Which is cheaper

[~Megan~]

Our home is not well insultated and running the gas heater is very expensive, to the tune of $400 a month in winter.

We want to use firewood for most of our heat but haven't found a good price yet so have been running the heater on low as its not particularly cold yet.

Would it be cheaper to use a space heater in the bedrooms? We have one or two of them and I wonder if it would be cheaper to use them to heat up the bedrooms than using gas.

We used them some last year to heat up the rooms then shut the doors and set the heater on 60 so that it would maintain a reasonable heat while we were under blankets and dressed warmly.

What do you think?


Our home is just so frustrating because one part is newer than the other and so we can have the heater on 65 and one room is nice and warm, a little too warm in fact, and the other rooms you can have the heater on 75 and still be freezing.

[PeacefulSeams]

That is what we did. Our gas bill was around $500 a month, which is totally rediculous. We bought some space heaters and turned our gas to the lowest setting possible. We also invested in an electric blanket for me and my DS. We had one heater in each bedroom and then another in the living room. It kept us warmer than the gas heat did!

[roadfamily6now]

I dont know where you are but your best bet would be to insulate.

Electric space heaters are very $$! Not a good idea. Also they are dangerous and should never be ran while you are sleeping.

We run an oil burner and a woodstove. Do you already have a wood stove installed? If not they are a pretty spendy investment. We bought our stove and pipe all used and at a great price but still our investment has been roughly $1000. In the long run wood is awesome! You will always have heat and nothing is as warming as a nice fire on a cold winter day.

[Emmeline II]

Originally Posted by roadfamily6now

I dont know where you are but your best bet would be to insulate.

Electric space heaters are very $$! Not a good idea. Also they are dangerous and should never be ran while you are sleeping.

When I lived in Alaska these were used by people in trailers; there were several fires every winter from them.

[stellimamo]

we put up styrafoam in our windows and it really made a huge dent in our gas heating bills over the winter. If you have single pane windows I would try the foam and tape. I think we spent $20 on it and same 3 times that in the first month of doing that.

[2busy2clean]

Insulate your attic as well as possible -- that is better than insulating walls.
The styrofoam on the windows is good -- Home Depot carries styrofoam pieces with an aluminum barrier on one side, I think they are for insulating garage doors, which work very well. My parents bought some for their RV.
Have you calked up the windows? and looked for other holes?
Are your furnace ducts in the attic? If so, insulate them as thickly as you can.
You can also move the air around inside the house with common summertime fans. My parents move heat from the hot room (fireplace) into the back bedrooms that way.

[~Megan~]

ok, well we rent so no investment in insulating will be happening.

We already have a woodburning woodstove. And we don't run the space heater while sleeping, just to warm up the room.

[root*children]

Hi, I just posted about how we manage this in our rental on another thread, but I'll summarize. There are things you can do that will require a little money on your part, but will keep you warm! And some things your landlord should do to ensure you have proper heat. Are you changing the filter in your furnace? It should be changed every month it's being used. Those are very cheap, about $1.50 for a filter. We went down in our cellar where the furnace is with a repair guy and noticed it was VERY warm down there! He said we needed to have insulation over that huge pipe that comes right off the furnace. It was essentially heating our crawlspace, and not getting all the heat up to the house. Also your landlord should make sure that everything about the furnace is running properly - the blower, the pipes all connected properly, etc. If he won't, and you are already paying $400 a month for heating, I think it would well worth it to hire someone yourself - it'd save you money in the long run, at least to get him to go down there, check it out and give you an itemized estimate (somethings you may decide you can do yourselves rather than pay him to do ).
HTH!

[~Megan~]

Thanks, we just had the furnance maintenanced.

I do plan to get some plastic for our windows but simply haven't got out to get it. The windows are very large and I think I'll need to go to a home imrovement
store to find plastic large enough.

[mightymoo]

I personally do the space heater thing. Yes, electric heat is expensive compared to gas / oil heat. But my furnace can't heat one room, it heats the whole house, so in order for us to be comfortable sleeping in the one room we all sleep in, I'm heating up six other rooms we aren't using. So I'm comparing heating one room with electric for a small time versus heating the whole house with gas all night.

When we go to bed, I turn the space heater on. I have no concerns about safety. The outside does not get that hot. I can touch it at all times. It has a button on the bottom so it will not run if its not upright, it shuts right off. It also has a timer. So when we go to bed, I turn it on, set it for a half hour or hour and go to bed. Sometimes if I'm cold in the night I'll do another half hour.

I do not have the ability to run my furnace this way and just for one room or just for an hour when I need it (I'd have to program it so it was the same hour every day and we arne't that consistent), so I feel this is a significant savings over turning the heat up for the whole house, though I'm thinking about how I can prove this conclusively.

[Sharlla]

Originally Posted by mightymoo

Yes, electric heat is expensive compared to gas / oil heat. .

Really? I thought gas was more expensive.

We use those oil filled heaters and we do use them while we are sleeping. http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?actio...07L&lpage=none

[mightymoo]

Originally Posted by Sharlla

Really? I thought gas was more expensive.

I guess it depends on your area and gas/electric costs, but around here, gas and oil heat is much more efficient than electric. I suppose if you lived near an electric plant and far from a gas source it might be reversed. Generally around here having electric heat is a negative to a property (and really only apartments would have it).

I've been bugging my parents to get rid of their mammoth electric water heater - they are paying $450 a month in electric because of this thing, where we pay about $15 in gas to heat our water (summer gas cost). Granted, its bigger, but still!

[AllisonK]

We bought a roll of painters plastic for about $12 at home depot or lowes. It is about 12 feet wide and sooooo long. We used it to cover our windows. Also to cover the bed for the HB, and painting for the kids.

[usandthegirls]

We bought a woodstove

recently and love it. We had one last winter in our old home before we moved and it saved us a TON of money. Our heating bill went from approx $350/mo to around $60-80/mo. We would use supplemental space heaters for our girls rooms when it got really cold.

If you can swing a woodstove, I don't think you'd regret it! It's a great frugal investment.

[mightymoo]

Originally Posted by usandthegirls

recently and love it. We had one last winter in our old home before we moved and it saved us a TON of money. Our heating bill went from approx $350/mo to around $60-80/mo. We would use supplemental space heaters for our girls rooms when it got really cold.

If you can swing a woodstove, I don't think you'd regret it! It's a great frugal investment.

How much did you spend in wood? Or did you have the wood off your own property? We don't have room for a wood stove and we'd have to buy the wood, but I'm just curious.