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.
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.
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.
A small fire in the house will keep it warm for as long as the house still stands
This is fine.
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.
Lol they really started calling portable ACs “micro heat pumps”. For fuck’s sake, a heat pump is just an AC with a different valve, invented ages ago, running in reverse!
Air based ACs/heat pumps can only work in a limited range. Modern coolant is quite effective at getting higher ranges, but for 0F you may need something like a heat pump dug into the ground to heat effectively. Still, for most days, these “micro heat pumps” should work pretty well.
Like with portable ACs (as they are the same devices), look for models with two hoses. The models with one single hose will pump out cold air, creating negative pressure inside your house that will suck in cold air from outside again. With a two hose solution, the air that gets cooled down/gets the heat sucked out of will be pumped back out immediately. For some cheap units with a single hose you may be able to convert them into a double hose design with 3D printing, duct tape, and messing around, but you should check if that’s possible before purchasing such a unit.
Don’t fall for those Amazon scams that sell amazing coolers/heaters for just a few bucks. They’re usually tiny, and at most produce a warm/cold breeze to keep your hands or face cold/warm. If you’re going with resistive heat (easy, cheap, portable, but half as effective as a heat pump in most scenarios), get one of those big units, not the Amazon shit that’ll burn your house down.
If you haven’t already, invest in keeping the heat inside as well. Door strips and better window glass can save a whole lot more heat than a portable heater will give you if your house isn’t insulated well. Find out where the drafts are and get rid of them (don’t get rid of ventilation all together, though, obviously).
If you need to selectively heat your home, keep an eye on your piping. Turning off the heat in a few rooms may save you money, but if your pipes freeze and your house floods after they burst, you’ll be spending every cent you’ve saved on repairing damages.
As always with electric heat, watch out for overloading your sockets. Resistive heat will easily pull a couple thousand watts out of the wall, and if you’re not using 220V sockets, that may cause the wires inside your wall to heat up (but not in the good way) or even melt. All heaters worth their salt are high-powered electrical devices that should not be plugged into sockets or power strips that aren’t rated for the total load these devices and anything else plugged into the same circuit may induce. The same goes for plugging high wattage devices into smart plugs (which you could use to get something like a thermostat effect going): make sure they’re rated for the wattage you’re subjecting them to. Oh, and please use a grounded socket, preferably one protected by a GFCI.
Read the manual of whatever heater you end up buying. They’re not very interesting, but they usually come with at least one “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to do that” safety warning that could save your life.
I’m told heated electric carpets are dope, but they aren’t common where I live so I’ve never tried one out.
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.
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.
mine XMR on a few computers
