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

I work in an unheated basement all day and the temp ranges from 55-62 degrees. I've grown accustomed to the temp with an array of fleece pants, jackets and socks. My children don't seem to be bothered by cold temps. The problem is my wife, she cannot handle any temperature lower than 66 degrees. I feel it's a little wasteful to turn up the heat for the whole house (we have one-zone heat) when she is the only one uncomfortable so I was considering an oil-filled heater to follow her around. I'm just wondering if it's worth it or will it be a wash cost-wise. Has anyone else tried this?

Reply to
Joe
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What part of Uzbekistan do you live? 66 degrees is not an unreasonable temperature to keep your house. It's probably better for the interior surfaces and structure as well. That few degrees probably won't make that much monetary difference and everyone will feel better.

Reply to
RBM

Small space heater is a good idea. Ones with fan are cheaper than oil filled. Know what you are going through because my wife is like that.

Reply to
Frank

55 to 62 is reasonable if you are active. A bit chilly for most that are not. We use 68 here and are comfy.

You'll probably find the space heater very expensive to operate. I tried doing that by keeping our family room warm and the rest of the house cooler. Oil bill went down, but the electric bill went up twice the oil savings.

Many people think keeping a house in the mid 60's is some sort of torture, but that is really considered warm compared to typical homes before cheap central heat. Can you imagine what it was like in some of the big stone castles? Last March we stayed in a stone house built in the 1100's. (Yes,

1100's, in Italy) The owner kept the heat at 57, but I had to boost it to
  1. The walls were about 2 feet thick so it took some time for it to warm up.
Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote

You know what gets meare the people that have weekend homes around here and the can't understand why they go through so much oil during the winter.

"I keep the thermostat all the way down at 60 degrees!"

They can't understand that when it's in the lower 20s at night, it's going to burn some oil to keep it at 60.

Reply to
Dr. Hardcrab

That was exactly the reason I didn't buy a castle

Reply to
RBM

I dunno, it's pretty routinely around that temp where I live at night, and I keep the thermostat on 64 after 11PM and the heat rarely comes on overnight. (I'm kind of a night owl on weekends, so I know.) Thing is, if you've got a house that's good at holding heat, it's going to take it a while to really drop down into the lower 60's assuming it's kept close to 70 during the day. (We keep ours at 70.) In fact, my heat usually only comes on twice a day unless it's really down at around zero degrees outside - then it starts to have a hard time keeping up.

We do have plaster walls that are good at holding heat, and we've done our best to weatherstrip the hell out of this place and replace any leaking doors and windows. This house was not this efficient when we bought it, that's for sure. But I'm sure plenty of houses are more efficient than ours, even now.

Those old stone castles are actually also really good at holding in heat. The problem is there's no good way to heat an entire castle, so of course they're cold today if you go and stay in one now in a room that was never used during winter when the castle was built. That's not what they used to do back in the day; the family would live in a couple of interior rooms during winter and they'd heat that with a couple of massive fireplaces that were constantly running. I guarantee you those castles were plenty warm - stone walls radiate warmth and seal out any cold air pretty darn effectively.

Reply to
basscadet75

buffalo ny: it's actually 71 degrees, so you may be wrong, but read on: a wife is never wrong, and she may change her mind, but personal comfort is unrelated to a democratic vote of your household population. comfort is often related to a combination of many things including temperature, humidity, barometer reading, and oxygen levels as well as frequency of fresh air changes. boost your home's insulation for immediate energy savings in dollars, and zone your heat. adding silent warmth from a brooder lamp's 250 watt infrared bulb will warm her frozen skin while you skiers thrive without thinsulate outerwear from

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{get a warmer answer of what she wants, or you'll be on the receiving end of more than her cold shoulder, mister! -ann landers never said this. } the 71 degrees standard and more are at:
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Reply to
buffalobill

Joe,

Buy her some thermal underwear, not sexy but hot in it's own way.

Dave M.

Reply to
David L. Martel

I've done some experimenting and found that 65 seems to be my hard limit. At 65 I am comfortable, at 64 my fingers start to develop permafrost.

Reply to
Pete C.

I assume when you say oil-filled, you are talking about an electric heater. Chances are that electric is going to be far more expensive than oil. It will be heating a smaller area so it may not be too bad and it will make heating the rest of the a little less expensive, but overall you are going to save money if you can heat that area without going to electric to do it, even if it means heating the rest of the home a little more.

Do you have air or water distributing the heat from the central furnace?

I suspect a professional HVAC man could make some suggestions that would allow you to get more heat in the basement without replacing the current furnace.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

I heat 99% with wood (oil this year $3.21/gal). I will be sittign around in t-shirt and wife "I'm cold, put some wood on". I think she would complain if the house was 85 degrees.

Harry K

Reply to
Harry K

It's hot water heat, I don't need the heat in the basement. It only gets unbearable when the temp gets down to the 55 range at the end of the winter and the ground is saturated with cold water. I'm just looking for a way to keep my wife warm without having to warm the entire house. It's her hands that are the problem.

Reply to
Joe

Just a suggestion. It actually works.

If appropriate re-locate the thermostat. Choose a location like the drywall directly in front of the furnace flue pipe. The thermostat will show a higher reading than the actual temperature of the house because of the radiant heat behind the wall. You can set it at 72 and no one will be the wiser. Who would ever turn a thermostat above 72? They'll just thinks that there is something wrong with them.

Reply to
tnom

Another less radical option (and one less likely to raise suspicion) is to relocate a floor or table lamp either directly below or in close proximity to the wall thermostat -- the heat radiated from this lamp will "fool" the thermostat into thinking the living space is warmer than it really is.

To ensure good results, you may have to remove any lower wattage CFL or energy saving lamp, if so equipped, and revert back to a traditional 40, 60 or 100-watt incandescent (for really demanding applications, substitute a 150 or 200-watt version and mumble something about your failing eyesight). =:o

Experiment with this and, above all, be subtle about it so that the powers that be don't catch on to what you're doing and, if they do, feign ignorance, as in "oh, how silly of me, dear... I never would have thought of that...".

Using trickery and deceit to save one marriage at a time...

Cheers, Paul

Reply to
Paul M. Eldridge

If Mama ain't happy, no one gonna be happy. I suggest let her have the heat on 66 like she wants.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

You want a wife to be practical ? ;)

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/

Reply to
nick hull

on 1/15/2008 7:36 PM Joe said the following:

Get rid of her and get a northern European wife. :-)

Reply to
willshak

You should be able to set up the current system to provide the needed heat or additional heat to whatever location you wife needs the heat. It may or may not require some additional hardware, but it is almost certain to be less expensive in the long run to use the system you already have taking advantage of the much lower cost per BTU of your hot water system than electric. Of course in a few areas the cost of electric is very low and there the situation would be different.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

First of all, you are one tough guy. Secondly, I think letting your wife have the house at 66F is reasonable. Life is short, and she's not asking for 72F, which is what a lot of people want. We set our themostat at 65F when we're home, 67F when the wind is bad or the outside temps are really cold, and we live by Lake Ontario. We also sit on the couch with blankets and various small and large animals (does your wife have a lap dog or cat? Free heat!), and that helps, too.

The oil-filled heater idea might work, too, for the times that 66F isn't good enough. We have a housemate on the third floor who uses a long electric radiant space heater to keep her main room comfortable, but I've never tried to figure out what portion of our electric bill that heater is costing us (we always seem to have someone living up there so we never have the opportunity to shut off that appliance to compare usage). It's ok; as long as she's comfortable, that's what matters. Life is short, as I said (and as I try to remind myself often), and it's only money.

Reply to
KLS

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