How to save money on heating costs There are four main strategies to save money on heat: Heat only the parts of your home that you're using. Heating your whole house is more expensive than heating just part of it. Don't close registers in unused rooms, though, because you can damage you ducts or even the furnace itself. Instead, use space heaters or other forms of radiant heat in the rooms that you actually use. (See space heater safety.) Adjust your living environment so that you're comfortable at lower temperatures. This includes using ceiling fans (yes, fans, even in winter; I'll explain below) and putting rugs on bare floors. Use cheap or efficient heating systems. This is where we'll choose between heat pumps vs. oil/gas, and radiant vs. forced-air. It's a big topic so we'll cover in detail below, but here's a summary: For whole-house (forced air) systems, heat pumps are the cheapest to operate, but they're the most expensive to install. They're also safer and healthier than oil/gas systems, which are more likely to burn your house down and which can poison you with the byproducts of combustion. (EPA) We'll cover air- & ground-based heat pumps in more detail below. Gas or oil-based are the cheapest to install, and are also the most common type of systems, but they're more dangerous and potentially unhealthy. Central systems are more expensive than space heaters or radiant heaters which heat only specific rooms or areas. I use one electric space heater in whatever room I'm in, rather than trying to heat my whole house. Insulate your home well to keep heat from escaping out of the house. You want to pay only to heat your home, not Wisconsin. This includes things like weather stripping doors and windows and putting plastic sheets over windows. Let's look at each of these individually.   Heat only the parts of your home that you're using aka, Room-by-Room Heating (Radiant Heat) instead of Whole-House Heating (Forced-Air) Heating the whole house is more expensive than heating just the room(s) you're using. If you can heat just the areas you're using, you should do so, because you'll save energy and money. This is what I use in my own home. If you already have a whole-house system (forced-air), this means pretending you don't have such a system and not using it at all. You can't just use the central heat and close the registers in unused rooms because that can damage your ducts and your furnace. Heating individual areas means using a form of Radiant Heat. Radiant Heat involves heating an object, which then radiates the heat throughout the room. There are many ways to get radiant heat, such as space heaters, radiators, and electric heating panels. Radiant is cheaper than forced air systems for three reasons: Most radiant setups give you a choice of how much of your home you want to heat. With forced-air you have to heat your whole home, whether you're using all of it or not. Radiant heating conveys heat better than hot air. It allows you to feel warmer even at a lower room temperature. Personal radiant heaters (like electric slippers and butt-warmers) make you more comfortable at a lower room temperature. Here's an example to explain the difference between radiant heat and forced air: A toaster uses radiant heat. The metal elements in the toaster heat up, and convey that heat to the bread. Very efficient. But a hot-air popcorn popper uses forced air instead, by sucking in room air and then blowing out hot air. They both use similar amounts of electricity, but the toaster is more efficient. You could toast a piece of bread with a popcorn popper, but it would take longer. Radiant Heat can be fueled by either gas or electricity. Electricity is more expensive, but safer and healthier. (You're less likely to accidentally burn your house down, and you'll never be breathing the toxic byproducts of combustion.) Another advantage of radiant systems over forced air is that the temperature is more uniform throughout the living area. With forced air systems the ceiling winds up retaining most of the warmth and the floors are pretty cold. More information about the benefits of radiant heat is available at WarmZone and Anderson Radiant Heating, although it's a little biased since it's published by companies who install radiant heating systems. There are many kinds of radiant heat systems: A electric-element unit you plug into the wall. These usually have a round face and oscillate (move from side to side like a fan). They typically use 1500 watts on the highest setting. Most electric space heaters are around 1500 watts, such as this one from Sears, which I own myself. An oil-filled unit you plug into the wall. These use electricity to heat the oil inside. They use about the same amount of electricity as electric-element units. One model I found is adjustable between 600-1500 watts. Radiant Heat Panel. The flat panel secures to a ceiling or wall and plugs into an electrical outlet (or it can be hard-wired in to the house's electrical system). Electricity heats metal elements inside the panel. The panels range in size from 1'x2' to 4'x8', and energy consumption ranges from 100 watts to 3000 watts. Manufacturers include Thermal Inc. and SSHC. A related option is radiant ceiling film. Hydronic Radiator. These circulate warm water, whose heat is then radiated into the room. Hydronic Floor System. Water is heated by gas, oil, or electricity, and then circulated through plastic tubing which runs under the floor or along the walls or ceiling. If on the walls or ceiling, the tubing may be concealed by plastic or metal panels. These are most efficient if they're in the floor, because warmth rises, and because keeping your feet warm makes you feel warmer overall. An electric-fueled system can easily use 1000-3000 watts to heat a small efficiency apartment. Electric Floor System. Same as above, but the warmth comes from low-voltage electrical wires, not piped water. Ceiling Fan Heaters. A new product on the market is the Reiker Ceiling Fan Heater, which is a ceiling fan that generates heat and then blows it around the room. I installed a couple of these in a very small, drafty rental house and the tenants tell me the units don't make the place toasty on very cold days, but that they definitely help. Unfortunately the tenants can't compare them to other heating methods since they've never had any other kind of heat in that house. In any event, this would only be a good alternative to an electric space heater. Remember that electric is more expensive than gas, whether your heating source is radiant or not. They're suitable only as replacements for electric space heaters or electric-based forced air systems, or where there's not already a heating method installed, or where the objective is to avoid the hazards of combustion rather than to save on operating costs. Personal Radiant Heaters. These are great because they use just a small amount of electricity but make you feel much warmer, so you can spend less money heating your whole house. These products originated in Japan, which isn't surprising because the Japanese are a lot more energy-conscious than Americans. From my friend's apartment in Osaka I can walk to a department store three minutes away and select from a huge number of "hot carpet" products, as the Japanese call them. These range from small butt-warmer pads up to full-room pieces. My friend has been using one for ten years. (Incidentally, last month the four of us here in the apartment used only 220 kWh/mo., compared to the U.S. average of 920. This was before winter, but we still expect to use less than average in winter.) At right are pictures of hot carpets I bought in Japan, along with an envelope for scale. I have no idea where to get them in the States, so if you know of a source please let me know. Below is another interesting product, USB-powered slippers. I did find a U.S. store that sells the slippers.     Adjusting your living environment Use ceiling fans Yes, ceiling fans can actually make you warmer. Let's see why. In the summer, when the fan is on a high speed, the fan blows air past you, removing the hot air that surrounds your body, making you feel cooler. In the winter, you simply put the fan on the lowest speed. That's usually not fast enough for the air to blow past you and make you cooler, but it's fast enough to push down the warm air that collects near the ceiling. (Remember, hot air rises.) So the key is: fast speed for summer, slow speed for winter. You can also try to use the switch on the fan that changes its direction. You can have the fan blow UP in the winter, which will push the warm air off the ceiling and bounce it back towards the floor along the walls, without rushing it past you to make you feel cooler. And if you don't have ceiling fans, you can simply aim a standalone fan towards the ceiling and get the same result. Fans of any type use very little electricity. So how do you know which direction blows up and which blows down? For 90% of fans, when you're standing under the fan looking up, counter-clockwise blows down and clockwise blows up. So how can you tell whether your fan is standard or not? Just stand under the fan with the fan at its highest setting. If you can feel the wind hitting you hard, then it's blowing down. To verify, stop the fan, change the direction, then turn the fan on full-blast again and compare the difference. Here's how you change the direction: Most fans have an up/down or left/right switch on the side of the fan (between the light and the fan blades), and it's usually unlabeled. Make sure the fan is off (not spinning) before you flip the switch or you can damage the motor. (Once you've turned the fan off, it's fine to physically stop the blades with your hand, just be gentle so you don't bend the blades, otherwise the fan will wobble when you turn it back on.) After turning the fan off, flip the direction (summer/winter) switch, then turn the fan back on. Using ceiling fans is one of the most important things you can do. They use very little electricity and make a BIG difference in your comfort level. All ceiling fans come with instructions on installation, but if you're not comfortable doing it yourself and you can't afford to hire someone, just get a regular box fan, put it on the highest shelf you have, and tilt it so that it's aiming at the ceiling. Use rugs on bare floors. If your feet are cold, your whole body will be cold. Along the same lines, remember that you can use heated slippers, as shown in the picture above. Wear more clothes. This may be obvious, but we all know people who keep their homes heated to the 70's and walk around with short-sleeve shirts and no socks. Turn off the heat overnight. Except for the most northern climates, you should be able to remain warm enough to sleep comfortably without any heat as long as you have sufficient blankets. If you can't stand to have the heat off completely then set it to as low as you're comfortable with -- 60, 50, 40. I've never used heat overnight and it gets into the low 40's in my room sometimes when I get up in the morning. Some people like to keep their houses warm all the time to prevent pipes from freezing, but if it's so cold that your pipes are at risk for freezing then you should be dripping your faucets anyway (or turning off the water at the meter and opening all the faucets, or using cheap heat tape), whether you're heating your home or not. It doesn't take more energy to heat your home in the morning than it does to keep it heated all night. Think about it: As you heat your home all night, some of that heat is lost through the walls to the outside, so your heater has to keep working to keep the temperature up. So overnight your heater is heating your home over and over and over again. If you turn it on in the morning then it's heating it only once. The only exception to this is if you have a rare geothermal heating system and it has a dumb thermostat instead of a smart one. (See Geothermal, below.) In all other cases, it saves energy to turn the heat off overnight. Jessica Strang writes: "I turn off the heat at night when sleeping and being in CT it is often freezing at night.  I lived overseas for 12 years in English countries and picked up a habit which I think is precious:  I order the best well-made rubber water bottles from an Indian company on the Internet which sells them all over the world.  Each are about $14, I use two of them.  You can fill them up with boiling water from an electric kettle and put them under the covers.  I figure I save money rather than heating the room and the two I use, one at my back and the other at my feet heat up the bed fantastically.  With regular use, the bottles last a good three seasons from Oct to March."  She's right about the savings. Boiling six cups of water electrically uses only 0.3 kWh of electricity, which would power a 1500-watt space heater for only twelve minutes. Note that if you turn off the heat and it gets below 60° inside, your refrigerator could get confused and not maintain a cold temperature inside. If this is a problem for you then you can still try turning the temperature down to 60, 55, 50, etc., finding out the lowest temperature you can go and still have a functional fridge. Adjust dampers to even out the air flow If some rooms aren't getting enough heat, you need to adjust the dampers. These are plates inside the ducts that control how much airflow each duct gets. Here's a picture on HomeTips.com. If this seems over your head then I suggest you have an HVAC professional adjust these for you (and show you how to do it). You should not close registers in unused rooms to try to increase the airflow to other rooms. Many systems can't handle the extra pressure. Close too many registers (which could be as few as one or two), and you risk overheating the furnace, reducing airflow, and blowing holes in your ducts. If you're really hot to close some registers, check with an AC/heating professional. They'll be able to tell you how many (if any) registers you can safely close according to the size and type of your heating system.   Heating Methods Radiant Heat We covered radiant heat above. It means things like space heaters, ceiling panels, wall panels, and radiators, which let you heat specific areas of your home. Heating just certain areas rather than your whole house saves energy and money. It's what I use and recommend. Central Heat (Forced-Air) Forced-air is a "whole house" system, which is more expensive than heating just the room(s) you're using. It works by sucking room air into a furnace, heating it up, and then blowing it back into the rooms through registers in the ceiling or floors. Even though it's more expensive than room-by-room heating, if you have your heart set on central heat then you should at least know the differences between the types of systems you can choose from. They are: Type of system Operating Cost Installation Cost Notes Geothermal Heat Pump Cheapest Expensive See more about geo systems Air Heat Pump Cheap Moderate Not for cold climates; moderate climates only Oil or Gas Furnace Expensive Cheap More likely to accidentally burn down your house; can expose you to toxic byproducts of combustion Electric Furnace Crazy Expensive Cheap Warm, Cold, and Coldest climates need about 27, 37, and 45 BTU's per s.f. respectively. Divide BTU's by 3400 to get kW size. So a 1000 s.f. home in a warm climate needs a 27 x 1000 ÷ 3400 = 8 kW system. If you pay 11¢/kWh, it costs 8 x $0.11 = $0.88/hr. to run it, or $214 to run it 8 hrs./day for a month. (source) As you can see, a geothermal heat pump is the cheapest to run, and it's also the safest, though it costs a lot more to install. The system itself costs about $2500 per ton of capacity, so a 2.5-ton system would run $5250, and then there's the cost of drilling to install the lines underground, which runs between $10k to $20k. Typical yearly savings vs. using a gas furnace for a 2000 s.f. home in Tennessee is $450, making the payback time rather long. The colder the climate, and the larger the home, the shorter the payback time. EnergyRight has a calculator that helps you compare the savings with a new geo system. Heat pump systems provide both heating in the winter and cooling in the summer. During the summer the heat pump works in reverse, removing the heat that's inside your home and depositing it on the outside. But heat pumps are better at heating than at cooling. In Nebraska, heat pumps cost about 25-30% less to run than oil/gas heaters and traditional AC units. (NE Public Power District) For moderate climates, an air-based heat pump is a good compromise between the cheap installation cost of gas/oil and the cheap operating cost of geothermal, since the installation and operating costs are between those of geo heat pumps and oil/gas furnaces. Even when the air outside seems cold, there is still heat in it that can be extracted. But the colder the outside air, the less well an air-based heat pump will work, which is why they're good for moderate climates (rarely below freezing) and not so good in colder climates. Oil & gas furnaces are the most popular because they're the cheapest to install, but they have some big downsides: They're expensive to operate. You're much more likely to accidentally burn your house down. You potentially expose yourself to the toxic byproducts of combustion. (EPA) I would never use an oil or gas furnace in my own home for the last reason alone. (I use electric radiant heat, and use it in whatever room I'm in rather than trying to heat the whole house.) The most expensive central heating system is an electric furnace (not to be confused with the electric air-handler in a heat pump system). Tips for forced air systems: Change the filter. A dirty filter makes your system work harder, and run longer to get your home to a comfortable temperature. Your home improvement store sells permanent filters which you can wash with a garden hose so you don't have to replace the filter each month. Make sure that the air can flow freely. There should be a minimum 1/4" gap on the bottom of doors so that the air can flow from a room with a closed door back to the room or hallway where the return air vent is. This is true even if you've closed the vents in the room or hallway where the return air vent is. Don't try to insulate an individual room by blocking all the ways for the air to escape back to the living area; it's SUPPOSED to flow back to the living area, even if the living area isn't heated. If the air can't flow, then the system won't be able to push much hot air through the vent into the room. Not only does this keep much hot air from actually getting into the room you want to heat, it can damage your heater since it's having a hard time pushing the air through. Make sure the ducts don't have leaks. Many local utility companies will check your ducts for free. Geothermal Heating (Heat Pump) A geothermal system circulates water through pipes buried in the ground which pick up the heat stored in the earth and then transfer that heat into the house. That heat is then blown through ducts to the living environment. So this is really a forced-air system with a very efficient source for the heat. Heat pumps don't just heat, they also cool: In the summer they extract heat from the house and pump it into the ground. The initial installation of a heat pump is expensive because it involves digging up your yard, but the operating cost is 25% to 50% lower than traditional heating, according to the Geothermal Heat Pump Consortium. The system itself costs about $2500 per ton of capacity, so a 2.5-ton system would run $5250, and then there's the cost of drilling to install the lines underground, which runs between $10k to $20k. EnergyRight has a calculator that helps you compare the savings with a new geo system. If your geo system has a "dumb" thermostat it's best to keep the system running all night rather than turning it off at night and turning it on again in the morning (or setting it back ten degrees at night and then resuming normal temperature in the morning). I hesitate to say this because readers are going to pounce on this statement and try to apply it to things it doesn't apply to, like forced air heating, air conditioning, and lighting. So let me be clear: Leaving the system on overnight saves more energy only if you're using a geothermal system, and if you have a dumb thermostat rather than a smart one. (It might also apply to radiant heat, but the jury's still out on that one and I can't answer it.) While geothermal heating is efficient it's not very fast. So if there's a lot of temperature to make up for when you tell a geothermal system to resume the normal temperature -- say five to ten degrees of difference -- then the system turns on some electric resistance strips in the furnace to boost the heat output while it's waiting for the geothermal heat to kick in. These resistance strips are less efficient than the geothermal heat, so this heat boost winds up costing you more money. A solution to this problem -- aside from leaving your system on all the time -- is to have a "smart" thermostat installed which knows not to kick in the resistance strips when you tell your system to resume normal temperature. There's more about this on the Clark Public Utilities website.   Insulating your home, and stopping leaks Tip: Many utility companies will perform a free energy audit of your home and pay for part of the cost of the items below. Take them up on it. Doors When it's cold outside, run your hand along the seams of the door. If you can feel cold air coming in, you're losing a lot of heat. If you can't quite tell, you can use a candle instead of your hand: if the flame flickers, you're losing heat. Install weather stripping on these doors. It's easy, it's self-adhesive, you just stick it on the door frame and cut it. You can also screw a sweeper to the top or bottom of the door to cover the seams there. If your door is old and poor-fitting, and you're still losing air after weather stripping, tack a blanket over the door frame at night. If you can do without this door during the coldest months and use another door instead, then leave the blanket up there all the time. Windows Caulk the edges of windows and install weather stripping. Close blinds and curtains at night. Tack clear plastic sheeting over the windows on the outside of the house with a staple gun. Holes in Ceiling Older homes may have pipes or electrical conduit running from the living area through the ceiling and into the attic. Sometimes there are large gaps around the piping where it enters the ceiling. If there are gaps like this in your ceiling, caulk them. These holes suck a lot of heat from your living area into the attic, because hot air rises. Attic Attic insulation isn't just for summer. Hot air rises, so a poorly insulated attic means that you have heat escaping into your attic. You lose heat into your attic even if there are no holes in your ceiling -- the heat still transfers slowly through the building materials. If your attic is poorly insulated, have loose-fill insulation blown in. Have your ducts tested for leaks. According to the Los Angeles Times (1-25-01), studies show that one out of every four homes loses as much as a third of its heating or cooling from bad ducts. Attic stairways allow a considerable amount of heat to escape into the attic. If you have a fold-down attic stairway, add an attic stair cover. Fireplace Close the damper to the fireplace when you're not using it -- otherwise, heat will escape through the damper. Some sources say a home can lose 30% of its heat this way. Clothes Dryer Most clothes dryer vents are just a thin piece of metal that doesn't seal well, providing an easy way for heat to leave your home. Install a dryer vent seal to stop this. Walls / Radiators If you have radiators, put some cheap reflective film on the wall behind the radiator to reflect the heat back into the room rather than having it be absorbed by the wall. You can get special reflective film at a home improvement store, or just use regular aluminum foil (shiny side facing out). You can tape it directly to the wall, or wrap it around cardboard and then mount the cardboard to the wall.   Be careful with space heaters While using space heaters in a few rooms saves you money compared to using central heat for the whole house, you're also a lot more likely to accidentally burn your house down with space heaters. Here's what you want to know about space heater safety. Electric heaters are safer than gas heaters. They're more expensive to run, but they're safer. Oil-filled radiators are safer than the red, glowing heaters with a fan inside. That's because the oil-filled heaters distribute their heat throughout the whole unit, and not any one part gets hot enough to start a fire. The downside of the radiators is that they take a while to put out any amount of heat that you can feel. If you're cold right now you'll prefer the fan-blow heaters, even though they're not quite as safe. Electric heaters are safer than they used to be. Almost all of them now will automatically shut off if they get tipped over. Check the specs on the model you're looking at. You can also see questions I've answered about saving on heating costs. Saving Electricity 101: Start Here How much it costs / how they charge What's a Watt / Kilowatt? How much energy stuff uses How to measure electrical use Mr. Electricity is your guide to saving energy in your home. General Electricity Myths Using elec. when off? Why is my bill so high? 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