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Posted: 11/3/2019 12:04:22 PM EDT
I just moved to Idaho. Night time temps have been well below freezing. The house is fairly well insulated. Heating is via electricity, there's no gas in this house.
I normally keep the inside temps at 73 degrees; at night, I turn it down to 60 and have electric heaters in each bedroom to save money. Is this correct? It seems that it could go either way, since I now run the house heater for a long time to get the inside temps up. So: do I save money by heating the house from 65 to 73 every morning, or should I leave the house temperature at 73? |
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Like you OP my house has electric heat. It will not get turned on. Ever. It's too fucking expensive. I use a pellet stove to heat my house. Fuck electric heat.
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Forced air gas furnace. I put my thermostat where I want it and leave it alone.
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Quoted:
I just moved to Idaho. Night time temps have been well below freezing. The house is fairly well insulated. Heating is via electricity, there's no gas in this house. I normally keep the inside temps at 73 degrees; at night, I turn it down to 60 and have electric heaters in each bedroom to save money. Is this correct? It seems that it could go either way, since I now run the house heater for a long time to get the inside temps up. So: do I save money by heating the house from 65 to 73 every morning, or should I leave the house temperature at 73? View Quote |
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Same boat, max temp in house is 65* in winter. Baseboard heaters throughout.
We average out for the year at $120 for electric. 40 summer / 200 winter est. |
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I live in a town where the city buys power from the local grid, then bills the citizens. They make a deliberate effort to keep the power affordable for us! Our realtor told us that last year, the highest power bill was $200 a month.
The previous owner apparently did the same thing, as she had electric heaters in every room. |
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You absolutely save money by turning down the heat at night and when you leave the house.
The thermodynamics of it is: - heat lost to the outside is a function of the temp difference between in and outside temps - the closer your inside temp is to the outside, the less heat is lost Even power companies used to say "set the thermostat and don't change it", but they are 100% wrong. |
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My house has 2 pellet stoves on thermostats... one in the master and one in the FR. I turn them both on in the morning, then turn on the central air to "Fan On" so it spreads the heat evenly. Stays like that until we go to bed. Wake up in the morning and it's a cool 61 degrees. Temps here at night have been in the low teens to upper 20's...
If we need more heat, we do have central heat, but it is propane. Our power comes from our solar. |
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I have hot water radiators. Just turned it on last night for first time.
It's an older boiler with big cast iron radiators. I took out the radiator in one bathroom for a remodel. Will replace with a small baseboard heater. House was down to 64 after several days at about freezing. Turned it on 70 ran for.abot 75 minutes. They are still warm and has not run again So we leave it. Has stays even and.no long runs |
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More than 3 or 4 degrees difference and you use more fuel/electricity re-heating in the morning than you would have maintaining overnight.
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Had the heat one once last week. My joints can't take it when it's cold. I can live in warm clothing the dog loves it my cat hates it. Sleeps next to me to stay warm.
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Turn my heat pump down to 63 when i am not home or sleeping.
65 when i am at home and awake |
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We heat with natural gas and it's free. We'll turn the heat down at night 3 degrees, we prefer it at 69 degrees when we sleep.
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First house with hydronic heat. I'm loving it, cause wifey can't jack the thermostat up and down (well, she could, but the lag is so long it wouldn't do her any good.)
Principally gas, with electric to run the boiler and the circulation pump. Supplemented with a wood stove, so far it's pretty amazing. Zero sound...wake up in the morning and the temp is exactly what it was when we turned in, 72 in the great room and 68 through the rest of the house. Be careful with supplementary heaters until you know the cost, OP. CSB, SSgt in GK (Germany) with a wife and three young kids didn't budget to fill the oil tanks under his house (common to GE houses, average about 4K liters of heating oil - and they take cash on delivery). He went out and bought four of the roll-around, oil filled, plug in radiators that kept his house nice and warm. His quarterly electric bill came in...it was 3,000 or 4,000 Euro. He was a good guy and went to the boss and told him the whole story before the collection people came to the AF. The officers took up a collection and paid it. |
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A couple degrees is fine, a 16F temp change means for a LOOOOOONG heating cycle time and then many shorter one's to reheat everything in the entire house plus the air itself. Turn down the high temp of 73 to 70, get proper humidification to be more comfortable and drop night time temps to 66-67f and save yourself some $$$ and be more comfortable to boot.
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Welcome to idaho. Yes, you will save by turning it back at night. I keep mine at 63 during the day and 60 at night. Eastern idaho at elevation gets cold. Typically burn 3+ cords of wood to supplement propane.
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Our furnace burns natural gas.
We set the thermostat at 74 degrees in the daytime, and turn it down to 70 degrees about 7:00 or 8:00PM. No need to have the house at 74 degrees when we are in bed sleeping. |
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An electric blanket will save you money on the electric bill.
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Quoted:
Where in idaho? Fall river electric in eastern idaho is around 7.7cents per kwh. Pretty cheap. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes |
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65- 67 all winter long my electric bill is around 70+
summer is get by with 55 dollar electric bill by leaving the temp at 75. then 73 at night changing the thermostat more than 3-5 degrees when you leave IMO is not worth the cost unless your house is sealed by 400 rolls of duct tape im happy to learn more from the pro's though |
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60F inside... LOL why even have heat? My heat pump is set to 71 during the day 69 at night. Fuck being cold cause you're a bean counter.
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Quoted:
60F inside... LOL why even have heat? My heat pump is set to 71 during the day 69 at night. Fuck being cold cause you're a bean counter. View Quote |
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Our thermostat is set at 68 with a night time setback of 58 (never gets that cold but I dont want the heat coming on at night) it's generally 62 when we wake.
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Quoted:
Do you have some actual science that you could share with the class that shows it's work or is this just personal opinion? View Quote Q=hA(T2-T1) See that "T2-T1"? That's the temp difference between in and outside. The higher the difference, the higher the heat transferred to the outside (Q in the equation above). It's that straightforward. The closer your inside and outside temps are, the less heat lost to the outside. That heat being transferred is supplied by your furnace or baseboard heaters. Money. |
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Quoted: I explained it above, but you can enroll in a physics class or thermodynamics class, or look up the equations: Q=hA(T2-T1) See that "T2-T1"? That's the temp difference between in and outside. The higher the difference, the higher the heat transferred to the outside (Q in the equation above). It's that straightforward. The closer your inside and outside temps are, the less heat lost to the outside. That heat being transferred is supplied by your furnace or baseboard heaters. Money. View Quote "Reheating" your house isn't just heating the air. The things in your house have all have a temperature. The walls, the floor, your mattress etc etc. When you bring a house from a cold temp up to a much warmer temp, you will notice that your heating system has to run through many cycles in fast succession. The air will come up to temp and it will shut off. The air will drop quickly again and it will need to heat cycle again. This will happen several times, with longer and longer periods of time between cycles, as the air slowly heats up all the materials within your house. The counter argument is that keeping all those things at their "normal" temp, not just the air, is more efficient than reheating them. |
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I can't stand forced air heat.
If left to my own devices, I'd leave the house at 62, and bump it up to 67 in the morning for showering. Girlfriend has different ideas. Electric blankets and a cold house are pure bliss. Again, girlfriend has different ideas. Cant put her ass on a cold toilet seat at night. |
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Electric heat and keeping it at 73°? Might as well burn money.
I like 67-68° personally. |
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You would sav money by not having the house at 73 degrees. I would die bring that hot. I have three 95% efficient gas FAF's and they stay at 62 in the winter.
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Except for a small wood burning stove, I heat my house with electric as well. However, in the winter my house is usually between 53 and 56. When it gets to 50, then the stove has to be fed a few times a night. The two electric heaters cannot keep up with outside temps around zero.
The greater the temperature difference between the outside and inside the faster heat transfers. This means that when trying to heat the inside too much, your energy costs will go up. But, by the same token, if the interior stuff (thermal mass) has been allowed to cool to well below your comfort level, it will take that much more energy to warm things back up. It is best practice, then, to try to maintain the inside temp to the lowest where you are reasonably comfortable. |
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Quoted:
Except that isn't the whole story. "Reheating" your house isn't just heating the air. The things in your house have all have a temperature. The walls, the floor, your mattress etc etc. When you bring a house from a cold temp up to a much warmer temp, you will notice that your heating system has to run through many cycles in fast succession. The air will come up to temp and it will shut off. The air will drop quickly again and it will need to heat cycle again. This will happen several times, with longer and longer periods of time between cycles, as the air slowly heats up all the materials within your house. The counter argument is that keeping all those things at their "normal" temp, not just the air, is more efficient than reheating them. View Quote |
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Quoted:
Except for a small wood burning stove, I heat my house with electric as well. However, in the winter my house is usually between 53 and 56. When it gets to 50, then the stove has to be fed a few times a night. The two electric heaters cannot keep up with outside temps around zero. The greater the temperature difference between the outside and inside the faster heat transfers. This means that when trying to heat the inside too much, your energy costs will go up. But, by the same token, if the interior stuff (thermal mass) has been allowed to cool to well below your comfort level, it will take that much more energy to warm things back up. It is best practice, then, to try to maintain the inside temp to the lowest where you are reasonably comfortable. View Quote |
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Quoted:
Except that isn't the whole story. "Reheating" your house isn't just heating the air. The things in your house have all have a temperature. The walls, the floor, your mattress etc etc. When you bring a house from a cold temp up to a much warmer temp, you will notice that your heating system has to run through many cycles in fast succession. The air will come up to temp and it will shut off. The air will drop quickly again and it will need to heat cycle again. This will happen several times, with longer and longer periods of time between cycles, as the air slowly heats up all the materials within your house. The counter argument is that keeping all those things at their "normal" temp, not just the air, is more efficient than reheating them. View Quote |
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