If I had to venture a guess, I would have said that it was better to space heat one room than turn up the heat in the entire home. That is, before I calculated the cost of various heating fuels. Find out how you can decide to space heat or whole house heat this winter.
Have you considered lowering your thermostat in the winter and only heating the rooms you use most? It is worth looking at fuel choices before you decide to space heat your home. In my case, we heat our apartment with Natural Gas and we would use electric resistance space heaters.
The Pellet Fuels Institute has a handy calculator that illuminates the cost of various heating fuels by pricing them per million British Thermal Units (MBTUs). It is pre loaded with national averages for fuel costs. I used these costs that are more typical in Minnesota:
| Fuel | Cost per unit | Cost per MBTU |
|---|---|---|
| Natural Gas | $1.00/ cubic feet of gas | $12.50 |
| LP Gas | $2.75/ gallon | $38.60 |
| Fuel Oil | $3.50/ gallon | $32.51 |
| Electricity | $0.08/kWh | $23.44 |
| Hardwoods | $225/cord | $18.75 |
Electricity is almost twice as expensive as natural gas per million BTUs to heat my house. According to the US EPA coal produced electricity emits four times the amount of carbon into the atmosphere as natural gas.
If electricity generated by coal costs twice as much and produces four times the amount of carbon dioxide, I am going to guess that it is better to forego electric resistance space heating and stick with natural gas. Does space heating make more sense where you live?
(Image: Oliver Sved/Shutterstock)
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I'm unable to heat just one room because I have hot-water radiators (powered by fuel oil), so I keep the thermostat low, and let it bottom out at 55 -- which it never gets down to. I work at home and set the thermostat to 67 for an hour or so in the morning to take off the chill. I keep my office door closed during the day so the office traps my body (and computer) heat. This also prevents drafts and cross-breezes between rooms. (In summer, just the opposite: everything is open.) I live in a brick row home in Philly so there's not a lot of exposure.
I wish i could find a good alternative. We have a 2 story house with vaulted ceilings. We're rarely in a few of the rooms. Unfortunately those rooms connect to the stairs and other rooms, so it's tough to actually get our house warm in the winter without an enormous bill!
We're also on natural gas.
http://munchtalk.blogspot.com/
we keep the thermostat low and heat the rooms we are in with small heaters, which is much cheaper than when we used to just use the gas heat...we would commonly get a bill of $400/month in the winter! crazy! we close doors of rooms not used and close vents, but it still doesn't make a big difference.
Most radiators have a shut-off valve, so even with central hot water or steam heat, you can still choose to close off and heat certain rooms and let others go cold. Our guest room is an icebox unless someone is visiting.
I rent a room in a three-story house (group level is the garage) in San Francisco. There used to be 7 people living in this house with their own individual heaters. I'm sure this was not the most efficient method to stay warm in the SF cold, but our landlady shut off the central heat so it was our only choice. Now that many of the former tenants have moved out and the house has been foreclosed, the central heat has been turned back on. I find that the central heating doesn't heat up the house very well, especially in my room. What I have started to do is turn the central heating up to 70 or 71 in the mornings, so that my housemate and I won't be shivering, but once it get to that point, I turn it back down to 66 or 67 degrees. If it's just me at home, then I leave it and turn on my space heater only when I want my room to be warmer. It seems less wasteful than turning on the central heating just to heat up my dinky room.
^ground* not group