Space Heater or House Heat?

[HSMITH]

The house I am in now is almost twice the size of the last one, it costs half as much to heat and cool. The last one was built in 1959 and this one was built in 2001. Both forced air natural gas heat and electric AC. Use programmable thermostats wisely and dress warmly, there isn't much else you can do unless you have a saw, a truck and somewhere to cut wood.

[uscbigdawg]

Micah,

Just kick the house heater on about an hour before you wake up to take the chill off. Same for when you come home. Run it for like 2 hours each time and call it good.

Rich

[redmanfixit]

I live "Up North" and last winter faced a period of 17 straight days when the temp. never hit zero with wind chils in the -30 range pretty common.....Hey tonight it will be 20. And my 100 year old house has VERY little insulation. So here are some tactics we use.

1. An air tight fireplace insert that is 80+% efficient (with a blower) or a wood stove is a great investment. We burn 15 cords of wood each winter which is equal to way over half our total winter heating bill and it only costs just over $40 a cord up here. Delivered and stacked oak!!

2. We run up to seven ceiling fans... yep.... they work to blow the hot air down from the ceiling to the outer walls and floors if you have them set on up draft

3. Shut off the registers in un-used rooms. We don't heat 2 extra bedrooms, the laundry room etc.

4. Don't heat your basement or crawl space. (In a crawl space you can insulate your hot air ducts.)

5.Turn the furnace WAY down at night. When our fireplace is burning we put our furnace on 50 degrees while we are sleeping... just as a back up. When the fireplace isn't burning we set the thermostat to 60.

6. Consider an electric blanket ---or several cats:)

7. Good quality ceramic electric space heaters are great if you are stationary for a long time ( watching the tube, yacking on enos, reloading) and many are very efficient.

8. Run a humidifier 24 X7. At 70% humidity you feel nearly twice as warm as you do at 20%.

9. During the day open all mini-blinds and curtains to catch radient heat from the sun. Shut them down in the early evening.

10. Insulated your water heater.

11. If your water heater is electric or gas with an electric blower.. put it on a timer to not run while you are not using hot water. (Ours fires up at 7:00 and shuts off at 7:00)

12. If you use your oven to cook a meal.. leave the door open after the meal to let the heat into the room.. then turn on your furnace fan (fan only) to circulate that heat through out the house.

13. Avoid the use of exhaust fans. They pump heat and humidity out of your home and draw cold air in through every crack in the building.

Good Luck

Seriously folks!!! This is a list of REALLY good suggestions. It gets a person thinking about larger situations when you sit with it. How do we expend energy and what do we really need and what are our belief systems? Think of these issues in a cost benefit equation and engineering expense. Kerosene heater seems fine till you look carefully at the details. The fuel is expensive and it emits poisonous gas. If you are trying to heat a rough work space it's OK but it stinks and is a fire hazard. NOT GOOD for unsupervised operation (while you're asleep) or in a living space. Electric space heaters are wonderful. The small ceramic heaters work well if you MAKE SURE you are not overloading the branch circuit wiring in the space you are using them. This means you have to take a little time to understand some basic electrical theory so you can use the technology safely. (Ignorance = Death, a common theme) It helps you to make an intelligent purchase decision. Don't buy cheap junk. There are electric space heaters that heat oil in what looks like an old style hot water radiator that can provide efficient warmth in a small space but you still need to be sure the electrical wiring, cords and distribution equipment will accept the loads safely. You can upgrade to more efficient ways of consuming fuel. There are gas furnaces that run at 95% efficiency. They can be zoned with programmable damper systems that will direct heat to the parts of a house that is in use at different times of the day. Or just work the dampers yourself, I call it driving your house. I install Rinnai tankless water heater systems for people all the time. I think these things are great. They use NO energy if you aren't making hot water. Through time it saves an enormous amount of money.

Step back just a little and look at the structure of these circumstances. Everyone here is a shooter, presumably or you wouldn't be hangin' here. The engineering/problem solving paradigm is the same one you are confronted with as shooters. Equipment suitability. What gun? What gear? What ammo? Do I reload? If you look at these questions from an engineering perspective you realize you already know how to solve problems like this, you just lack information specific to the problems you're trying to solve. And perhaps interest and impetus to solve the problems. Little decisions and small errors can sum up to big problems.

Expand the space you believe needs to be warm and you spend more. Shrink that space and spend less. Do you feel deprived if the warm space is small? Why?

If you read Brian's book and follow the fundamental themes, it's about efficiency, focus and problem solving. Internal reflection, attitude, openness to whatever works and gets you where you want to go. These are very good "muscles" to exercise. There is no action in the human experience that comes without expense. We are surrounded by thermodynamic processes. If you generalize the paradigms you have more energy to follow your hearts desire. (shoot more) at a lower "cost".

WE (this is the editorial we) act together as a civilization in small ways, individually, that sum up to massive expenditure of energy. If WE act as individuals with an awareness of the results of our actions and encourage this in others, the sum is greater efficiency and less energy expended on a tremendous scale. Yes it matters. When you look at a course of fire and visualize how you're going to shoot it, little details add up rapidly to a good or bad performance. This a principle of non linear progressions.

And people tell me all the time that they don't think consciousness can have any interaction with the manifestation of physical reality! HA!

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Lazarus Long

[Ledge]

1. An air tight fireplace insert that is 80+% efficient (with a blower) or a wood stove is a great investment. We burn 15 cords of wood each winter which is equal to way over half our total winter heating bill and it only costs just over $40 a cord up here. Delivered and stacked oak!!

Green firewood is going for about $200 a cord here, and $300 a cord for seasoned. $40 a cord is crazy! If I send the UPS shipping labels, would ya pack a few boxes up for me?

[MichiganShootist]

I buy my winters supply of firewood in June or July when all the wood cutters are starving for cash and few people are thinking forward. I put a small classified in the paper telling what I want and ask suppliers to leave their name, price, and phone number on my machine...and that I will call back the lowest price supplier and will pay with crisp hundred dollar bills COD. It never fails to yield 6 - 10 calls. I have learned however...that I must be home when the wood is delivered to assure it's dry oak rather than green aspen or pine.

This season I bought 15 face cords of all red and white oak ---split, dried, and delivered, for $40 a face cord... I did pay the guys an additional $5 a cord to stack the wood on my racks and cover it with the plastic that I supplied.

Now that we are having night time temps. in the 20s everyone is buying firewood and the price has risen to $50- $60 a face cord plus a delivery charge (not to mention stacking)

As with most transactions-----Timing is everything.

Oh yeah-- it's hard to tell how much wood is in the back or a dump truck or trailer....So all my wood racks are either one or two cords in size.... so I can make sure that I get the wood I paid for.... this year the supplier ended up exactly one cord short... and I would have been screwed if the racks didn't keep him honest.

[Micah]

MichiganShootist, your list of tips is excellent! Thank you very much for the input

And moving south...that reminds me of something a comedian once said:

I live in Flordia and when I travel north people ask me "But don't you miss the seasons?"

I tell them "f*#k no, I LOVE the seasons! That's why I moved somewhere where we don't get the shitty ones."

[AikiDale]

All this talk about heat made me realize it was getting a little chilly here. Weatherman says it's 42 degrees. Guess I'll give up and start a fire. AC/Furnace hasn't been on in over a month.

[Dan Sierpina]

This season I bought 15 face cords of all red and white oak ---split, dried, and delivered, for $40 a face cord...

So, are you getting 1/4 or 1/3 of a cord of wood???? Ledge is probably quoting a cord of wood, not a partial.

[MichiganShootist]

In these parts.... a face cord is 2' split wood 4' high by 8' long.. and a full cord would be just twice that volume. I think those measurements are pretty standard.

[JThompson]

Increase the rate and frequency on your dryfire routine.