Save Money On Your Heating Bill (VIDEO)

Winter's here, and you're probably cranking the heat. But hold your thermostatic enthusiasm: high temps in your home lead to high utility bills -- not to mention a high price paid by the earth. In today's episode, Umbra offers tips for staying warm without planetary or pecuniary peril.

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Comments

[GrainneKathleen]

I live in central Maine where it can feel like Winter half the year. We keep our thermostat during the day at 58-60 degrees. We wear at least two layers - thermal tops and bottoms, pants, and a wool sweater. Since we have an asthmatic cat, we make a small room with windows facing south and west, a "sauna" by keeping on a humidifier for him during the day. I spend lots of time in this room (it's my studio); the humidity and sunlight make it the warmest in the house and my plants thrive in there. If I am cold while in the house, I shut off the room and plug in an energy efficient heat lamp. warming only the area where I am. While out of the house and at night, we shut the heat down to 52 degrees - no problems with frozen pipes. When out at friends' houses and in public places like a stores or the doctor's office, we sweat bullets. You get used to cooler temps. It makes sense environmentally, financially, and is better for your health. The extreme temperature changes in going from a warm indoor environment to a very cold outdoors can weaken the immune system. And the higher the heat, the drier the air, which leads to coughing and drying out of the sinuses, making them more susceptible to germs . (Knock wood) we rarely get colds.

[adzeman]

My thermostat's "08 depression spread" is 55/58/60. The first is normal everyday, the second is bath and and dinner, the last is for company. Microfiber is cheap and light for layers, though wool is still a sentimental favorite.
This may seem extreme by US standards, but common in the world community.

[lapoutlander]

Agreed. 55 and above are fine if you dress as our ancestors did indoors. 2 layers on top (part wool), good thick socks and shoes or slippers. If you cover your neck, feet and waist properly only your hands will know the difference. I find I can go a few degrees colder still if I am just siting around with a blanket, but 55 and above and I can be as active as at 68. The caveats, well the dog will be up on the furniture, the cat will be perpetually in your lap, the plants will be dormant and you need to be careful over humidity in the house. And to be safe if the ground freezes in your area stick an electric pipe wrap heater on your incoming water just in case.

[thursty]

I am in the middle of my 4th winter here in western Colorado with my thermostat still set at 50 degrees F. My house is uninsulated except the attic and has unsealed, double hung, single pane windows. I am retired and living alone so when I got to thinking about all my camping gear and clothing sitting unused, I decided to experiment.

I probably save enough each winter to outfit myself at REI for clothing and shelter for a trip up Everest. My combined gas and elec. bill barely topped $100 one month. Guys at the gym whine of paying over $300 per month and getting assistance.

My best unique acquisition to make it workable was a pair of ragg wool fingerless gloves that allow comfortable hours at the internet on my laqptop.

When I need a break there is the library, the gym, and the over-heated home of a friend (utilities included in her rent).

[BlackDemfromNH]

55 degrees at night???? That's COLD! Has anyone really tried sleeping outside at 55 degrees? It's really uncomfortable, even with lots of blankets. We lower our heat to about 65 degrees at night. We have forced hot air heat so it actually feels cooler than that. When we're home and up and about I set it at an even 70 degrees. When we're out I lower it to 64. I don't like to drop it too low because it takes too much to bring the temp back up later. It's more efficient to maintain a temp than to raise it to my comfort level from a very low temp.

[Willow712]

I live in Iowa and my programmable thermostat goes down to 55 at midnight and goes back up to 68 at 9 am (I work evening shift, so go to bed about 1 am). I have regular sheets, two quilts and an alternative to down comforter with a duvet cover on it. I take a corn pillow to bed with me (flannel pillow filled with corn, microwaved for 3 minutes) to help warm it up fast, and I am comfortable all night long. I hear the furnace come back on at 9 right before I get up. My house has reinsulated walls, an extra 12" of insulation in the attic, a new set of storm windows, a new energysaver furnace and my furnace sometimes doesn't come on all night. Last night it was 6 degrees outside. It all depends on what you get used to. If you dropped your night time temp one degree every week, you could easily sleep in 55 degrees. Just need extra covers.

[Tom95134]

If your house is pretty well insulated and you have drapes on the windows instead of blinds or those thin fashion shades you might find that your house won't get down to 55 overnight. If you don't have drapes then consider buying some with thermal insulation on the window side.

The trick with the "smart thermostats" is to get one with anticipation so it has enough look-ahead smarts to bring the house up to normal temp about the time you get up. Also, make sure you program the start of the night cycle early enough.

Forced air heating dries the air and adding humidity will make the house feel more comfortable because it reduces cooling due to evaporation from your skin. When you shower leave the bathroom door slightly open and don't turn on the vent. Let the "steam" escape into your house and help with the humidity issue. It's also a good time to buy a few more plants so they can help moisten the air.

[little old lady]

Helpful posts. I see the to "how much heat" depends upon several factors: Insulation, gaps, outside/inside temperatures, type and location of heat sources, individual physical differences, willingness to change, to name a few.

I set the living room propane stove at 65/59. Keep heat lower in other rooms (electric). Sleep with window open much of time. Have a BIG comforter, blanket on couch and office, long underwear. I had to experiment awhile to find what worked for this house.

[little old lady]

no...I don't sleep with the window open AND the heat on in that room.

[DRaymond]

As they say, and now for the science...

Thermal transmission across a barrier is the thermal conductivity of the barrier (the inverse of its thermal insulation value) times the square of the difference in temperature. In other words a ten degree difference in heat transmits one hundred time the heat that a one degree difference in heat does. So for saving energy increasing the insulation is important, but even more important is keeping the difference between inside and outside temperature as little as possible.

Leaks are another matter,

Now, here is why you might be tricked....

Everything in a house has thermal mass. When you turn down the heat in the evening all of the solid materials give up their heat to the air as it cools, so the drop is gradual and you feel it less because you are surrounded by and touching warmer things. In the morning the furnace not only has to warm up the air but the air has to warm up all the mass in the house too. So you are surrounded by and touching colder things. So you hear the heater is going full bore and not seeming to do much.

Most people set their thermostat to kick down at bedtime and kick back up just before the alarm clock. Depending on the construction of your house instead to kick down the thermostat well before bedtime and coast on the thermal mass and kick back up well before when you get out of bed.

[Hunffingtongreen]

I've often wondered about the energy it takes to heat the house back up and if there is a point at which it's better to keep the house warm than to let the temperature fall too far?

I'm starting to think it's a not an issue. But do any studies address this? Sometimes when they actually study such things rather than just apply "logic" they are surprised at the results.

My logic is now telling me that this is not a concern because that amount it takes to heat it up, you would have had to have been spent keeping it warm? But that logic may be flawed and reality may be different?

Any actual studies out there? She says "experts" say 55 in the video but gives us the names of no experts, articles, or studies.

[lapoutlander]

The difference is having the furnace run in short runs (normal) or in longer runs(heating up). For just about all but electric heat it would be marginally more efficient to run in longer runs. And the house loses energy partly as a function of the difference in temperature inside-outside. So go ahead lower your thermostat, there is no case of "leaving it warm is more efficient". (BTW this is the old fluorescent light paradigm which is a canard. They may last longer but you won't be saving electricity leaving them on)

One issue about heating back up and cooling down is humidity. Your house on its own can't lose the humidity as fast as it can lose the heat. And that means you risk condensation. Now active humidity control though an air exchange unit could fix that. But if you don't have that then avoid putting much humidity in the air in the evening. Shift cooking and bathing times and use a programmable thermostat to decrease the temperature in steps through the evening. Better still learn to use less water and live with near night time temperatures all day long.

[Fraugher]

Forget about hard numbers- thermostats are notoriously inaccurate in and of themselves, and also because of their placement. Simple rule, turn it down as far as you can tolerate. In one area of the house your thermostat may show that as 62, in another as 65... Not sure how these folks sleep in 55, that sounds a little, er, um, cold, to me...

[frantaylor]

Thermostats are not accurate because they do not have to be accurate. They just have to function, and people will tweak them for comfort. The only reason to put temp markings on a thermostat is so that you can set it repeatably.

[adzeman]

An antique Hudson Bay 4point blanket and a modern down quilt make 55 desirable. Its the getting out of bed that's tricky. The smell of coffee handles that.

[Yves Papa]

The lower (50) you get it, the more you save.
The energy spent is directly and solely driven by the temperature difference between inside (say 62) and outside (say 45).
More energy will be spent keeping the home at a higher low temperature (62) and bring it back to normal (70) from that higher low temperature (62) than doing the same with a lower low temperature (50) . In others words, it costs more energy to maintain a higher low temperature, (the extra 12 degrees; 62 - 50 = 12) than to heat the home once from the lower low temperature (50) to the higher low temperature (62).

Think of it as if your normal temperature was 62, and it is easy to understand the savings of lowering it to 50, which is the same idea as lowering from 72 to 62.

[little old lady]

Your post is fascinating, but I am a little confused. Say the outside temperature is 0 F. And I keep the inside 65 during the day and 59 at night. Is it better to just leave it at 65 all the time? Or is the answer dependent upon the outside temperature fluctuations?

[lapoutlander]

To take your simple example Keeping your house at 65 would nominally result in
24*(65F-0F) = 1560
arbitrary energy units per day versus say
16Hrs*(65F-0F)+8Hrs*(59F-0F) = 24*65+8*(-6) = 1512
for a relative savings of 3%. In reality nighttime temperatures are regularly lower so the savings can be greater. And learning to live with 59F just about all day would mean 3 times as much saving in this example.

People with sensory / circulatory problems should seek suitable advise before attempting

[jalyn]

One of the problems many northeastern homes have are very musty basements, because they simply can't afford to heat basements. And so, that odor permeates throughout the house eventually because the homes are too well insulated. A house needs to breathe. Thankfully, air ventilation systems are catching on. Older beautiful homes here have one problem, and that's their smell. So, it's a battle between a clean-air house or an energy deficient one.

62 degrees is comfortable for me, I keep the window open a bit for fresh air in winter months. Sorry, guys, I know it creates more elec. but, we wear layers the rest of the time.

[pravin]

What I do is wait for the warmest part of the day and then ventilate parts of the house that need fresh air and close the doors of those that smell fine enough. I open windows, run fans, and then close it all up after a few minutes. This way, you do not gain air that takes longer to heat to a comfortable temperature. This advice works only if you live in an area where there is at least one semi warm afternoon a week during the winter.

[frantaylor]

Alas, in many parts of the country, the temp does not rise above freezing for many days at a stretch.

Ventilation does not get rid of the problem, you are just stirring things up. You actually have to remove the source.

This is a horrible problem, we just moved out of a "charming" old house that suffered from this big time. Everyone is much happier now that we are not breathing mold spores all the time.

[MightyMeno]

Even Florida can get chilly (it'll dip down into the upper 30s tonight; the lowest I've ever seen it here in my neck of north-central Florida was 19). We always set the heat pump to the low 60s on cold nights .... being buried under the comforters feels so good!

We live in a mobile and it leaks like a sieve, so I leave the shades down; whatever solar gain we'd get by raising them is offset by those leaky windows which even weatherstripping hasn't helped all that much. I doubled up the thickness of the curtains over the sliding glass door and the back door and that's helped more than anything. Our last electric bill was $76.

[Yves Papa]

In my opinion, if you force yourself to discomfort for saving in energy, that's not right to me. There are better ways of saving - insulation, not heating/cooling when away, using environmental sources (sunlight) and opportunities (run the dishwasher, cook and bake when it's cold to help heating the home).

I also stick to incandescent lighting - usually, when I need light, I also need heat, and that works for me. 6 60 watt bulbs in the bathroom during the shower makes it nice, warm and bright without having to turn the heat on.

[frantaylor]

Your opinion can change rapidly when you open the envelope with the gas bill.

[nick1936]

67 during the day 62 at night and 45 while away

[TruthAndTheory]

why does the heater need to be on at all while away? unless there are pets at home, you may as well turn it off.

[frantaylor]

Frozen pipes

[deluxebrand]

Oh and our heating bill in January last year was $367