cheaper to use oil-filled heater and keep thermostat at 62?

[Joe]

I'm not as tough as you think, the thermostat hasn't moved from 66, it's just when she's not in the house I noticed that no one complained about 62 degrees so I got to thinking if using a space heater for the rooms the wife occupies could save me the extra 4 degrees elsewhere in the house. What I'm not sure about is if lowering the thermostat in the rest of the house and using a space heater will save any money due to the higher electric cost. I guess I'll have to buy one and run it for a month to see what the damage ends up being. I was just wondering if anyone else had tried this.

[dlstark]

Truth About the cost of using a typical Electric Oil Filled space heater. I keep a vigilant watch over my eating/cooling expenses. Last Year I paid $351.40 for 4306 kWh. This works out to $0.08 per kWh making a 1500 w (1.5 kW) oil heater cost $0.12 per hour to operate. I have a Fuel Oil Furnace that has a 0.65 gallon/hour nozzle. That is, I use .65 gallons of fuel oil every hour the furnace runs. At say ~$3.35 a gallon for fuel oil that makes my furnace cost $2.18 per hour to operate and and my Oil Filled Electric Heaters are only $0.12 (each) per hour to operate. Now you can think about what you should do and not listen to people who can't do or don't understand simple math.

[Bubba]

You might not understand that simple math yourself. Your furnace may cost $2.18 per hour but that is actual burner run time. Most furnaces dont run for an hour each hour. Way less actually. Your single electric heater however probably will run a solid hour and more. Your oil furnace is heating your entire home. Your electric heater is heating a single spot in that home. Add up the amount of electric heaters you need to put out the same amount of heat as your oil furnace. Now add all of those $0.12 per hour electric heaters. It all depends on how many heaters but the numbers will be a bit closer now than in your example of "simple math". Bubba

[dlstark]

I used 228.10 gallons of fuel oil for last years heating season of ~5 months. This is on average 1.5 gallons of fuel oil per day. Understand some days I don't run the furnace, but lets just say on average to keep the math simple, thats approximately $5.00/day at today fuel oil price. As a comment to a previous post

"You'll probably find the space heater very expensive to operate."

All I was trying to prove is that Oil Filled Electric Heaters cost $0.12/hr to operate and this might prove more cost effective to the original poster's problem. And yes it is rooted in simple math. I use one in the family room and keep the rest of the house closed up and much cooler. Mine does cycle and I don't leave it on 24/7. So in my humble opinion, for some applications, oil filled electric heaters offer a cost effective efficient alternative.