Long story short I need to heat my home with electric heaters this year, minisplits and hvac are way out of my budget. I’d like some help picking a solution.
Choice A: Micro heat pumps
Choice B: Multiple PTC Fast Heating Ceramic Heater
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B099YYWNM9
Been coming up short on solutions so if you have a third option I’d be glad to hear it.
If you pay for electricity, make sure you include an estimate for the electricity cost in your cost calculations. A resistive heater like choice b will be much cheaper to buy, but will be much more expensive over time. Heat pumps use about 3x less energy.
They make window heat pump units now. Might work as a cheap mini split alt.
https://www.google.com/search?q=window+heat+pump&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
I don’t know the price points but I appreciate the suggestion.
The window units are much more efficient than the portables with hoses. A lot less loss.
Very good to know, thank you.
This is correct, but they do make portable units with two hoses. Those will be as efficient as a window unit. Costco sells dual hose models for a few hundred dollars. I have one and it works well for heating and cooling.
Info that could help others help you:
House or flat?
Renting or owning?
How large an area do you need to heat?
How many rooms?Temperature and savings:
Where I live they say that a house with people living in it should be at least 16°C (~60°F) to handle the moisture we generate.
Humans should have at least 18°C (64°F), preferably 20°C (68°F).
That means that you could close doors and let unoccupied rooms have lower temperature than the rooms you use.
If you’re stuck with space heaters then you’ll save quite a lot that way.I live in America, A safe estimate would be 1000 sqft after halfing the house to 2 bedrooms and a bathroom for the winter, I live an area that gets mild winter weather but can hit near 0 degrees F for weeks at a time, we’re used to running the heat at 64F, owned house(for the sake of simplification)
If there are any water pipes through the second half of the house you cannot let those exterior walls reach freezing temperatures. Whatever solution you go with needs to account for the entire space in some capacity.
Good point but I accounted for that. I’m going to leave a heater like is in plan B running in our kitchen space on low for a large part of the winter. Hopefully it will be enough but I’ll keep an eye on it with a thermometer.
If you only care about pipes freezing there are low wattage pipe heating cords (also called “heat tape”) that would use way less energy than a space heater. Also if you have drafty windows the temporary “window insulation kits” that basically shrink wrap the window work surprisingly well.
Thanks for the info.
A small fire in the house will keep it warm for as long as the house still stands
This is fine.
mine XMR on a few computers
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I’m not a fan of crypto but between resistive heating which gives no return, and mining heat which gives unprofitable return, it makes more sense to get your heating from mining if you already have the computer for it. The only question is whether it’s financially better than a heat pump short term.
And of course this only really works for one room so it’s not a complete solution.
I’m told heated electric carpets are dope, but they aren’t common where I live so I’ve never tried one out.
You definitely want to look at the economics and see if there’s some way to do a mini split. It will save you a lot on electric, and depending on the climate you’re in, it could pay for itself by February.
Where do you live and what’s your ideal temperature?
