Using Infrared Heaters to Reduce Heating Costs

New solutions to old problems often arise from necessity. This is absolutely the case in our situation of domestic heating. We bought an old farm house 5 years ago, apparently the previous owner threw in the winter in the free projects. Our first winter the house was a wakeup call, we filled our oil tank 7 times higher than in winter! Heating oil has no where near the cost today, but it was still quite a big hole in our budget.

Since that time, we gradually added updates to our house to reduce our heating bills. We’ve installed replacement windows on the 24 windows of the house, we have added cons doors and improved insulation of doors, added insulation in the basement, and we added insulation on the exterior walls of 4 rooms, we have redesigned far. It is absolutely a step in the right direction; winter drafts in our home are no longer strong enough to blow out a candle, and last year we only filled our oil tank total 5 times.

This year, oil prices have risen so much that we were absolutely shocked when we filled our tank for the first time back in September. We decided to lower the thermostat to 62 degrees until we could find ways economically efficient, we could complete our system of forced air heating. We looked first to the pellet stoves and wood stoves. This idea was soon discarded because labor costs to install heating and ventilation in our new house. Moreover, we knew we would be buying fuel to burn, and then it would be cheaper than heating oil, it would still inconvience. Finally, we were looking for something that would be safe for my 4 year old son and our labrador, and we were afraid of security issues as a hot stove set in May.

Then we turned to electric “chimneys”, and then they seemed a little better, we felt they were not very efficient for their size and cost. They are rather large and take a facility to put them in. It seems that one of the chimneys were worth getting out of our price range. The alternative seems to be the small portable heaters or convection or ceramic types. Again we were worried about putting them in our house because they all get hot to the touch, and when I used them in the past, they seemed to really create problems with the ‘dry air and static electricity, the more they were used, and they only heated a small area relative to their size.

Then we got on infrared heaters, we were intrigued by the first site we’ve seen, because he claimed that the unit did not warm to the touch, and because she did not use forced air , no moisture was lost in your house. One of the leading infrared heaters is EdenPURE, which says that infrared heaters have been developed with three principles in mind, economy, comfort and security is exactly what we wanted!

The heater works when the electricity generating infrared light, which is the safest form of heat because it does get hot, as described here. In addition, infrared technology requires less energy to create heat, which makes it much cheaper to use than other forms of heat. If you run the infrared heating all day at full power, you will see an increase of approximately $ 1.50 $ 2.00 per day. We doubt that you can use the heater that much, though. We bought a unit that will heat up to 1000 square feet. It heats very quickly and you can feel the heat about 5 minutes to turn on the heater. The air is dry as it usually is, and my son does not get nose bleeds and sinus problems, as he usually does during the winter months. In recent months, since receiving our heater, we have noticed a change in our electricity bill by about $ 0.30 per day, not bad since we have our oven thermostat set to 60 degrees now.

Another feature we want in the infrared heating is the size and portability, it weighs less than 30 pounds and is on casters, able to move the heater very easily if we go to another room. The exterior is black plastic with a wooden facade, and is not really noticeable in a room. We bought the heater COMFORTzone 1500P, which can be accessed here. It is very quiet to run, we often forget it is on. Our goal is to save at least one filling the oil tank in place this year, which will more than pay for the heater itself. The way we go, we look forward to buying a heater infrared our smaller room for next year! Infrared heaters are wonderfully safe and effective to supplement your heating system at home and best of all, they will not break your budget!