Using small electric portable heaters in rooms at night and turning gas heat way down?

Electricity is Cheaper than Gas at this time. Just make sure those Electric Heaters do have Thermostats and tip over Safety devices on them. I have A Gas Log Fireplace, and the price of a gallon of Gas is outrageous now, so I rarely use it. You can also use Electric Blankets on the Bed at night to help stay warm. Personally I like it cooler when I am sleeping.

We started doing the same in an 1100 sq. feet apt last winter and it did help some.

We shut both bedroom doors and both bathroom doors and used oil filled electric radiators. A very nice warmth from them.

The thing is that when you put the thermostat back up the next AM the gas furnace has to run longer to bring it back up.

But even with this we did have a savings on both our gas and electric bills it wasn't a whole lot but every dollar counts.

If you are using any space heater with an open element that turns orange or red they are not energy saving. Anything that heats up quick with an element like that such as an electric stove and oven, space heater, toaster uses more electric.

In general, those small electric heaters are expensive to operate. To determine the cost, get one of those Kill-A-Watt electric meters and see how much running them is costing you (one model lets you input your cost per Kw).

You didn't say much about the age of your home and how well it is insulated. Some things that may help in the future are: making sure you have enough insulation in the attic, making sure your windows are energy efficient, and (as a previous suggestor said) having an energy audit done. Your natural gas bill is way too high.

One thing I must emphasize that several contributors have got completely wrong: Lowering your thermostat so that it is set to 55 instead of 65 will save money EVEN IF your system has to work hard ("doubly hard") to get back to 65 in the morning. This is why programmable thermostats save so much much and why tankless water heaters do too.

At today's rates, natural gas is significantly cheaper than electricity for providing heat. For your situation, it will depend on what you have the house set. I would estimate that if the space heater is running constantly, then you're loosing the cost benefits from natural gas. Where a space heater is really useful, is for "spot", (close to what you're doing). I have a small heater on a timer that comes on to heat the bathroom. I do this instead of heating the whole house in the morning. So that the heater runs for about 15-20', which previously the furnace ran heating the whole house.

I'm not that good at math but try to understand this.

1 Kw is 1000 watts, your heaters are rated in watts per hour used example(heater 1000w =1Kw per hour 40% guess =400 watts per hour) add wattage from each heater together using the formula above to find total Kw per hour x hours of use for billing period. Look at your electric bill to find how much 1Kw cost and x that with by estimated use and that should give u A close answer.

Also try setting temp lower all day say 65 degrees and wear somthing like sweatpants amd sweatshirt around the house thats what I do.

Why not measure. Do one week as you did last year and look what the use of gas and electricity was and do one week with your new method and see what the sue of gas and electrcity was. Provided both weeks had more or less the same wheather, this should give you a good indication.

In general, there are two disadvantages with your method. Due to the low temperature at nite, your heating will have a hell of a job getting he house to temperatrure again in the morning. And second, electricity is more expensive per amount of energy than gas. But you have to measure to make sure which is the best.

Other methods which you can thinks of : get a new heatinginstallation, modern ones are fare more efficient than old one, and make sure that heat stays in the living/dinig room by having a door, so that all the heat doesnt go the roof.

No, it won't. The items in your house would have cooled to a point when the furnace comes on again to 72 deg., it needs to work doubly hard to get everything back up to normal again. You burn more gas this way.

Keeping heat registers closed in unused bedrooms help, but don't forget - that heat is still generated at the furnace and it only does an inefficient job of heating those closed bedrooms.

Setback thermastats work, but people tend to overdo it. 5 degree difference just before you hit the bed and before you get up is all that is necessary to see some savings.

Your heating bill is quite high. 3000 sq.ft home should not burn that much gas. Get an energy audit done. It will reveal where your energy is really going.

I personally feel you are going about this the wrong way by freezing yourself and your loved ones like this.

William r is somewhat confused, units of energy are in kwh (kilo watts per hour) so in usa the average unit price of electricity is 12 cents per kwh and gas is 4 cents per kwh (from a google check) so in his example of 1 kw electric heater using an average of 400 was per hour of say 10 hours per night (2 hrs warm up 8 hrs sleep) the kwh is 0.4×10 = 4 units of energy x $0.12 = $4.8 per night.

In practice with a well insulated property it's not necessary to heat a bedroom all night, in all electric heated social housing in high rise accommodation blocks bedroom electric heaters were on time clocks 2 or 3 hrs pre heat before bed and 2 or 3 hrs hest prior to morning rise.

You may save a little but there would be better ways. First, if you would replace your thermostat with a programmable unit you would probably save 10-15% if you used standard setback settings. Also, in a home that big, if you do not have a zoned system you are wasting a lot of money. Finally, there may be better things to do like add insulation, etc. For more info concerning these topics and more check out my source.

I have roof solar panels that generate way more than I can possibly use (the extra KW go into the grid and the electric company pays me a paltry 5 cents/ KWH). So basically, my electricity is free. I put electric radiant heat in the floors whenever I remodel - I m up to two bathrooms and the family room. Saving lots of $$$$.