Would it be cheaper to heat with space heaters or the baseboard heaters that are in the apartment?
I have 4 baseboard heaters in my apartment. I very rarely use them as they are not very efficient as in they are one of the most expensive ways to heat a home. I use a window heat pump to heat the kitchen area. I set it to 65 degrees when Im actually home either on the weekends or when Im sleeping. It runs for a few minutes then shuts off and repeats every so often. The 2 baseboard heaters in the bathroom and kitchen I again almost never use. The 2 slightly larger baseboard heaters in my bedroom and the tv room I use even less. For my bedroom, I use either a portable baseboard heater which I think would be cheaper (1500 watts) considering that the 1 thermostat runs the tv and bedroom baseboards (1500 watts each so 3000 watts when turned on) and the 2nd thermostat runs the other 2 baseboards. Or I usually use an oil filled radiator heater for my bedroom and I also use that for the tv room on the weekends. Just got my bill and it was sky high. Should I just stop using my space heaters? When I leave for work or shopping or for any reason, I always turn off all of my heaters and unplug them. It would seem like I should use my oil filled radiator space heater to heat my bedroom when Im sleeping since it has either 600/900/1500 watt settings. I use either 600 or 900 watts. But maybe they are on all the time when I am asleep and dont realize it. Any advice from someone with more experience with this kind of thing would be greatly appreciated. Thank You
STEVEN F2020-12-18T23:30:42Z
Electric is nearly always the most expensive. BOTH space heaters AND baseboard heaters come in electric AND fuel burning varieties. A portable baseboard heater IS a space heater.
1 watt of electrical power equals 3.14 BTU's of heat. It makes no difference if the heat comes from a baseboard heater, a stand-alone room heater or an electric central heater. They are all 3.14 btu per watt. Baseboard heaters have no fan as the others do have fans. Therefore the baseboard heater is the most efficient by a hair.
the thermostats control the on/off cycle for the heaters. from what you say, there are separate thermostats for each room/baseboard heater -- so the space heaters won't be more efficient -- they'll all be just about the same cost if the thermostats are set the same. -- grampa
If you are heating the same space to the same temperature using the same technology, then it will cost the same no matter what shape that technology comes in.
I don't know what a window heat pump is or how much power it uses, but I can tell you that the baseboard heaters, assuming they are the kind with electric coils and not radiators with water in them, will cost the same to run as the plug-in heaters if you are heating the same room to the same temperature. If the baseboard heaters use 3000 watts, they will probably come on less often or for shorter times than a 1500 watt heater that heats the same room. If there is a thermostat for the baseboard heaters, you can turn it to a lower temperature so the heater comes on less often. In your situation, I would probably shut off the kitchen/bathroom ones, keep the other two at your minimum acceptable temperature when I'm home and awake, and keep the portable heater in the bathroom, always on at a low level. But that's me; I don't know where you most like to be warm.
A certain amount of electricity can only produce a certain amount of heat, and all electric heaters produce almost exactly the same amount of heat per watt.
I have a forced air electric furnace that heats the whole house. Lord knows what wattage it uses, but it needs two whole circuits to itself. One winter I experimented by using two 750-watt oil-filled radiators and only running the furnace for a few weeks at night when it was below freezing outside. From the end of September to the end of April, my heat bill that winter was within $50 of what it was the previous winter using only the forced air furnace. I can get that much variation if we have a slightly cold winter, so basically it costs exactly the same either way.
If all your heat is produced by electricity, then the only ways to reduce the bill are to heat less space, or to use less heat in the spaces you do heat. If you keep one room warm and one room cooler, then you have to close the door to the cooler room or the heat from the warmer room will go there. By all means, turn off all the heat when you go out. You aren't likely to get frozen pipes in an apartment, though it can happen in very old buildings in very cold weather.
Back when I had a wood stove as my main source of heat I would, naturally, come home to a very cold house in winter. I'd just leave my outdoor clothes on until the house warmed up a bit and I had a nice hot cup of tea in me. I had baseboard heaters in every room. The only one I used in the 13 years I lived there was the one in the bathroom. That was the only room I wanted to be really warm. I kept its door closed most of the time so it was always warm. They say most people sleep best in a warm bed in a cool room. An electric blanket, or better yet a heated mattress pad, would be a lot cheaper to run than a heater in the bedroom. Turn it on half an hour or an hour before you go to bed, turn it off when you go to bed, and you ought to be quite comfy at night for a lot less money.
Several different A/C maintenance guys have told me that space heaters are the most expensive way to heat a home. They do not recommend them. Also, in an apartment building, in most of those buildings, space heaters are illegal, because they are fire hazards.