How do you use your heating in the winter months?

We have a timed programmable thermostat, so the heat is off while we are away, and then on in the hours we are home but awake. And, we set the temperature to be lower while sleeping.

Keeping the house on the cool side is also a big part of saving. Most of the time we are no higher than 66 F.

(we get down to freezing a dozen nights a year, rarely below 28F).

Maybe 5 years ago, I installed a Mitsubishi ductless HVAC system in my 1941 condo: http://www.comfortup.com/mitsubishi-mxz3b24na12000-22-000-btu-17-5-seer-dual-zone-wall-mounted-mini-split-air-conditioner-with-heat-pump-220v-6-6?gclid=Cj0KEQjwnKzABRDy2pb7nPSazdsBEiQAI4lZQJXNGrNeZeOp1-Q1iyQ4eKGr9G7ln7und4msC0KmjM4aAstu8P8HAQ.

This product is very popular in other countries but seldom seen in the U.S. It’s extremely efficient, and my electric bills are amazingly low.

Wintertime means heating 24/7. I work at home, plus Sadie-dog and Martin-cat are here. Also, I’ve read that it can actually cost more money, and waste energy, to turn-off the heat during the day; it’s more of an effort to reheat an entire home than to maintain a consistent level of warmth.

It can get very cold during January, so I supplement the heat pump with baseboard heaters.

As little as possible.

I’ve lived in cold weather areas most of my life and had to keep the heating bill down. The temperature sometimes gets below 0 degrees F. Here’s what I do

1) Furnace
Turn the temperature down when you’re sleeping and not home. A thermostat with a built-in timer is well worth the investment. Or you can simply change it manually.

I’ve never heard the “short timed blasts” theory. I

2) How warm do you need it?
I know people who keep their houses at 80F. They have really high bills. I’m comfortable at 68F, but most people want it more like 72F or 76F. Warm socks and sweaters help.

Get a thick warm comforter for sleeping.

3) Windows & door
In really old places, there might be interchangeable screens and windows. You install the screens in the warm weather and swap for the glass in the fall.

More recent places have both screen and glass installed, and you slide them into place when the weather changes.

Most (I think) homes have double-paned glass that insulates really well on its own.

If you have drafts under your doors, replace the weather strips.

4) Extra energy-saving steps
If you really need to keep the bill down, you can stop drafts and put extra insulation on your windows with plastic

You’ll find window film kits at the hardware store.

@Love_my_doggie Yes! The Mitsubishi ductless HVAC! I saw my first one in a hotel room in the Bahamas back in the mid-90’s and was completely astonished by it. It was just hanging there on the wall and cooled the room efficiently. I grilled the hotel manager about it and how it worked. My sailboat has the system and it runs on either AC/DC. It is incredibly energy efficient and has to be to run on DC. Having no ducts saves a lot of work upon installation. It’s perfect for boats. The house back at the ranch that I manage has it and the hotel room I’m presently staying has it. I could never understand why you never see this system in the US. But it’s been a few years, so maybe it has arrived.

The cost of our winter fuel bills could fund a small principality for a year.
We allocate an extra piece of coal for the house staff, more than enough to sustain them.

I have two furnaces in my house; the old one works the old steam radiotors and the new smaller one, the remodeled kitchen and bedroom. I have programmable thermostats, have the heat at 68 from 3 p.m. To 10 p.m. Then down to 63 for overnight and up to 65 from 7:30!a.m. To 9 a.m. If I.m home for longet, I’ll turn the heat up earlier than 3. It can get down to the teens and twentiesin the winter where I live but is generally in the 30s and 40s.

It sounds like you have electric heat if you are talking about short bursts.

<—- (If not the most energy conscious person in the world definitely in the top 10. I watch and monitor my fuel consumption like a hawk.)

My house is equipped with an oil-fired boiler with baseboard heat with 2 zones: living area and sleeping area. Each zone has programmable thermostats for 4 temperatures per day and 5 day / weekend settings.
I also have 2 wood burning stoves which I can use for all of my heating needs when I am home.

I have set my T-stats to come up to temperature about 30 minutes before I have to get out of bed. I keep it warm and comfy for about 1–2 hours so I have time to eat breakfast, shower and get dressed. Then I let the temp. go down to a cooler level that requires a sweater in the house during the day. Around supper time I let the temp go up again for for about 2–3 hours which gives me time to eat, relax, get ready for bed, shower, and get under the covers.. Then I let the temperature go quite low.
The times are different for the two zones and I have tailored the schedules to most efficient while applying heat when and where I need it. I have “inefficient” incandescent lights that I turn on when I am in a room and they apply heat right near where I’m sitting.

The previous owners of my house used 1700 gallons of heating oil per year. (Figure Oil costs about $3 per gallon.) Before I got my wood burning stoves I used about 750 gallons per year. With the stoves I burn about 200 gallons per year.gallons if I am lazy or traveling..

@Espiritus_Corvus I, too, learned about the Mitsubishi option during a trip to the Caribbean. We were on St. Martin, and our villa was cooled by that lovely, soft, noiseless air from the wall units. Later, I saw the same system in the U.K. and France.

The company needs to do a better marketing and PR job in the U.S. There’s a reason why older houses often lack central HVAC; the ducts are huge, difficult to install, and take up a great deal of space. I put a traditional system in my mother’s house when I renovated it, a chore that was like fitting a square peg into a round hole. The ducts had to be run throughout the basement and attic, plus we lost a couple of closets in the living space.

I really need to visit your boat and have a look at your own Mitsubishi system. Because my research will be extensive, I think a weekend-long trip might give me enough time. Please let me know your schedule. I’m only trying to help you, of course.

@LuckyGuy You really do sound efficient. The log fires sound amazing. I am in a boring Terraced house which means no log fires, I’d much prefer that. I have a combi boiler. I have no idea what that means. Except to say that, I think it heats water as it comes out of the tap as opposed to storing hot water (which I am more familiar with).
I am trying to find information online as to which is the most effective way to run a combi boiler. I don’t have a thermostat, so what I have been doing is putting it on a timer.

The temperatures seem inaccurate too on the boilers interface, as it says currently 64C which is impossible. It won’t go lower on the interface than 40C, which again makes no sense.

That means the house gets quite cold, then a few hours later it goes on again. So the base= line is lower logically speaking. I read somewhere that this is more cost effective. However, I am seeing arguments saying that keeping it on lower is better. There appears to be a great divide between the two camps.

@Call_Me_Jay Some great tips, I have asked my ‘landlord’ to instal a thermostat as currently I am just going on ‘Oh that is so hot’ or ‘blimey I’m freezing’, which is not regulating the output. I’m going to think more about insulation. Thanks.

@LornaLove Those centigrade temps you are quoting sound logical in terms of the hot water range – not for the room temp range. So your house uses the hot water heater to’heat the house too. Flutherother would probably be the most familiar with your system because he lives in the same country.

When I was first dating my Ex they only had coal fires to heat the house and a back boiler for hot water. It was hot as hell in the living room and freezing when you went to bed!

I live in a place about the size of a shoe box. I have electric panels and a wood stove. I keep one panel on in the living room at 18C when the temperature gets below freezing outside and the bathroom floor is up a bit higher some times. Our electricity is cheaper than what LuckyGuy pays where he is. I remember when we compared costs one time. I guess my monthly bill for both the service and the watts I consume in the cold of winter are just over 100USD. In the summer months, they are as low as $40 or 50. Right now, they are about $70. There is a noticeable increase when I have company stay and there are more showers taken. My hot water heater is very new and rather state of the art.

Firstly I’d check your home insulation. The Scottish Government helped fund things like loft insulation. I’m not sure if they still do. Draughty windows in Scotland can make a house impossible to heat. The temperatures you quote are for your boiler’s hot water output there should be a thermostat somewhere that controls house temperature. I have something similar to a combi boiler. I set heating to come on half an hour before I get up then it goes off in late morning and comes on again in the evening. I can overide this at any time by pushing a button. I also have thermostats on each room radiator so that I can turn the heat down in rooms I am not using. I also wear a thick woolly jumper around the house in winter. Welcome to Scotland!

PS I keep an eye on my energy consumption but I pay by direct debit so costs are averaged out over the year and I don’t get hit with unexpectedly high bills.

Rarely at night (I have a wonderful, heavy duvet) and as sparingly as possible during the day. Full disclosure: I live in Texas, so it rarely gets lower than the 20s and 30s, if that—but for my thin Texas blood, that’s cold.

I LOVE my low utility bills in winter! In fact, ever since I installed a NEST thermostat two years ago, my utility bills have been much lower year round.

This will be our first winter with a gas furnace. Prior to that we used our heat pump and space heaters.

When I live in a cold place I use I close off zones in my house. I still heat the entire house, but the side of the house usually not used is kept much colder at 62 degrees. Mind you, my house usually are over 3,000 sq ft, so they have two zones, sometimes three. I’ve used styrofoam board to. Kick off zones when the house wasn’t built with doors in the right place.

In the parts of the house I mainly live in I use a programmable thermostat. 66 when I am out of the house and 70 when I am home, sometimes as high as 72. Depends on the house and what I’m doing. The programmable has 4 times a day it can change temp, so I can have the temp change just by 2 degrees from one temp change to another.

Heat is crazy expensive. I definitely try to save.

If you have a small place it will heat up fast. When I’ve lived in small apartments we could turn up the fan on the heat and it warmed up easily, but there was always some heat all day. Otherwise, it would get down to freeze the pipes situations. You don’t want that.

If the windows let a lot of air through tape heavy plastic over them on the inside. Also, make sure you door is sealed well at the bottom and sides.

I live in Alask (born and raised) When we’re home we turn the heat up to 65, and when we aren’t home we keep it at 60, because we don’t want the dog getting too cold. If it’s really cold outside, we’ll turn the heat up a bit more, because we don’t want the pipes freezing.
We have a gas heater, and I have a heated blanket that I turn on before I get into bed in the winter, and then turn it off after the sheets are warm.
It’s 36 F right now, with a low of 16 F.

When I lived on campus in Michigan the heat was steam heat through a central infrastructure like NYC. It was awesome. I was always warm. In NYC I’m usually nice and warm too as long as there isn’t a cold blast very early or late in the season when the heat hasn’t been turned on yet.

I love this question @LornaLove. We all have such different needs and experiences and I’m learning things (the info about the air con units is fascinating).

Like you in your earlier life, I live in the sub-tropics so my house isn’t set up for cold weather. Big windows, and open, airy spaces. Not great when it gets colder for a couple of months of the year. Because I don’t like being too cold or too hot, we have lots of methods to keep our environment comfortable.

We have wood-burning slow combustion heaters at either end of our long home. We don’t use them a lot, and often we only end up using one of them, but we will have one burning all day for a month or two. Really, this is more about aesthetics than the economic heat production. I just love a good fire!

We also have two reverse cycle, split air conditioners at either end of the house. So if the temp drops but we don’t want to light the fire, we can change the air con from cool to heat and warm the place up – or even just warm the area we’re actually in. We can close off some areas to save on cooling/heating the whole house.

We have blinds on the windows. We have some big window areas. This keeps the warm in during winter but helps to keep the heat out in summer. I’d recommend having heavy curtains in the Northern part of the UK. That will help reduce heat loss through your windows and so cut costs.

Make sure your loft is insulated. Ours is. That helps prevent heat loss through the ceiling/keeps the heat out in summer. It really does make a difference.

Even using door snakes can help. As @Call_Me_Jay suggested with your doors, you want to reduce any heat escaping through gaps around your doors/windows/ceilings.

I also have throws on the lounges for when it’s just a bit cool at night. I bought a couple of heated blankets too. When I’m working during the day in winter, I might not want to heat the whole room but because I’m sitting and not moving, I can get cold. I just plug one of those in and it saves heating the whole room.

We have solar panels for electricity generation and a solar hot water system, so our bills are now very reasonable. Electricity is expensive in Australia. Solar power helps negate those costs. It costs a bit to put the panels on the roof, but there used to be great rebates and we actually get paid more for any unused power that goes back to the grid than we do for the power we draw from the grid.

@Earthbound_Misfit I also am finding it fascinating. We are all so different. I really do miss sun shine and large windows, I don’t miss the creepy crawlies though!

I live in a rented house, small and boxy. I really don’t want to bug my landlord too much as I feel he rents to us at a reasonable rate (not sure but I do think so). I might end up buying my own insulation of sorts.
@flutherother Do you go out each day? I know you are retired, but I am amazed that you could stay at home in winter with no heating and a jumper??

I usually go out during the day but my flat holds the heat pretty well and the south facing windows help. If I’m home and its cold I can override the timer at the press of a button.

PS My flat is two bedroom but quite small. Heating bills average just under £40.00 a month electricity is another £30.00.

I have an apartment with electric baseboard heaters. In the winter I turn it on briefly in the morning to heat it up a bit, then off to save on the heating bill. If I am cold but don’t want to turn on the heat due to the expense I use a warm blanket and take hot baths.

The lowest that the temperature ever gets around here (Tacoma, WA) is +10ºF.

We use a Mitsubishi heat pump. We only turn it on in the evening and early morning hours.

When the electricity goes out we use a wood stove.

@LornaLove You really should have a thermostat. They are not expensive and a programmable unit will save you money if you set it correctly. Installation is not difficult.

The 40C and 64C numbers you noted are not the temperature in the room. That is the temperature of the water being circulated through the pipes. Your boiler will turn on when the water gets below a certain value, e.g. 45C, and will turn off when the water get above a certain value e.g. 90C. The circulator pump will come on when your thermostat calls for heat and the water temperature is above a set value, like 40C.
When the system is working perfectly you shouldn’t even know it is working. That is why so many people here don’t have a clue about what is in their homes. Most work well for decades. Magic.

@flutherother My bill is coming in at around £150 pm. Is that too high do you think?

Anyway, I’ve been super good the last two days, I put it on to shower then off the whole day with a jumper on. (I have to get used to the word jumper, I normally say jersey). Then I put it on again later. So hopefully it goes a bit better. I think though, the company I am with just estimates as I’ve been in credit for ages and then they returned some money to me the last quarter. (Which is unusual since they normally keep it to off-set it).

@LuckyGuy Totally agree, I’ve written to the people that rent my house to me, I think it’s supposed to e a law here to have one, not sure. It’s highly frustrating I must say.

I’m just amazed at some of the methods of heating that I have never heard of. LIke @gondwanalon heat pump!

@LornaLove Heating plants differ because the home heating requirements, fuel prices and avaialbility, and personal needs differ.
I live in a cold climate where electricity prices are high. There are no natural gas lines in this area so most homes use oil as their fuel. Oil fired boilers can put out a tremendous amount of heat.
So why doesn’t everyone use oil? Well, you need to store the oil in giant 1000 liter tanks, usually in your basement. I have 2 tanks! but I have a big basement so it does not matter.
If I had natural gas I’d have a gas fired boiler. I could have propane delivered but that is expensive so I stick with oil – and of course my wood burning stoves. I have a wood lot that supplies me with all the wood I can ever need.
If I lived in a region where the temperature did not get so low I might consider a heat pump. They extract heat from the air or the ground. That is very cost effective until the temperature gets below about 4 – 5C then the system uses resistive heat which is very expensive.
There is no one perfect solution for everyone but if we understand the trade-offs everyone people can optimize for their own needs.

I had a heat pump in my old apartment in town and when it got more than -10C which is often here in the winter, it was pointless.

Heat pumps are the most common method here. There are perhaps a couple of weeks of weather where heat pumps are not sufficient enough so most have a heating coil backup to bridge that gap. It’s generally very efficient except when the heating coils need to kick in. Gas is so cheap now that I’m hoping our new to us furnace will knock the utility bills down a couple of notches.

@ARE_you_kidding_me You’re fraking welcome.

@LornaLove I would give your energy supplier your meter reading so they can give you an accurate bill. I would check for draughty windows and doors to see if insulation can be improved. £150 seems a bit high to me but you don’t want to be uncomfortable in your own home.

@flutherother Thank you.