OT - Do these heaters save money?

Hi - has anyone here saved meaningful money with infrared quartz heaters (using PTC). My local guru's not available and there's a great deal on one. Thanks!

Julie. Got a link for that or something more to go on?

Yes I do... thanks - http://www.iponiczone.com/heating/1500w ... eater.html

I haven't been able to prove that these heaters actually save any money because it is just something that is so hard to measure.

I do own one and I like it. I know I use more electricity but haven't been able to figure out how much more and then I have to try to factor in propane costs...and the costs of the fan on the propane furnace...it's not like I can use the furnace and propane without incurring some electric costs with the furnace too.
So I don't know if I use more than I would if I used the propane furnace. I have no way to adequately compare it.

My house is an 75 year old crappy little farmhouse with minimal insulation and a propane furnace that is way less than very efficient.

I will say this...using the infrared heater allows me to maintain a general overall more comfortable/warmer feeling and I haven't used nearly as much propane...so I know I saved money on propane...did I spend it on electricity? Maybe...but it wasn't like my electric bill doubled or tripled.

I am not geared towards doing the figuring that would need to be done to actually evaluate electricity costs and comparing with or without or propane or not. Way too much work to suit me.
Now if my furnace was new and efficient...then maybe not so much of a savings and not so much difference in general comfort.

Well, I already have all-electric, but can't talk to the power co. til tomorrow (they advise on these things to some extent), but what got me was the 1,000' supposed range, and my place is kind of in a straight line so if it did a good job could be worth it... right now I'm spending way too much on heat and a 'cathedral ceiling' doesn't help, but turn into a useless block if I try to live in the cold, so I'll see what they say in the a.m.

If I remember what I was told about Quartz Heaters...It was that they heat people and items but not the room air. They are still 1500 watts which pulls a lot of electricity. (1500 watts is 15 ..100 watt bulbs)

Thank you - I just did a little research and you're right LSAT, so I'll have to think about it some more.

Julie wrote:Hi - has anyone here saved meaningful money with infrared quartz heaters (using PTC). My local guru's not available and there's a great deal on one. Thanks!

When it comes to electric heat, there is a direct relationship with the watts used and the heat produced. Any electrical heaters conversion of watts used to btu output are the same basically. Infrared heater are good because they can be aimed at you and they heat you not the air, so you feel the heat, where a electric furnace heats the air and then circulates it.

But the same rules apply. X watts = X BTU's, there's no magic bullet. Hooking up too many electric heaters can overload your electric wiring.

Using electric heaters can bring some high bills. Insulation and sealing air leaks, is necessary to lower heating costs, I also lower the house temps and use electric blankets at night.During this last cold spell my bedroom was 55 degrees I keep the heat register off year around. Jim

That sized unit is for a area 10 foot by 10 foot by 10 foot = 1,000 Cu Ft, that's a small bathroom. The power draw is the maxium safe draw for one outlet.

The cost too run it 24/7 would be 2 KWH times 24 or 48 KWH. I don't know what youf electric rate is, but at $ .15 per kwh the daily cost would be $ 7.20 per day.

Each heater would need to be hooked up to a outlet that nothing else is hooked too for safety. Usually the are added until the wiring fails Bad idea.

Two reason for portable heaters, emergencies, and profit. It wouldn't cost more to heat with them than a electric furnace, but the furnace is wired to do the job, your wall outlets aren't, and in old weather you need enough heat in the fight places to keep thd plumbing working. Jim

Julie wrote:Yes I do... thanks - http://www.iponiczone.com/heating/1500w ... eater.html

They can force you to save money, but not because of the efficiency of the heater. A Btu is a Btu is 3416 watts, whether it comes from electricity, gas, wood, oil, propane, dollar bills, or whatever. The heater you're looking at simply heats the air passing through it with IR bulbs. It is no more efficient than an electric furnace, and quite possibly less so.

How do they force you to save money? The advertising and brochures say you can heat only the part of the house you are using, i.e., close the doors to the unused bedrooms and other rooms. You can accomplish much the same thing by closing the registers of your hot air heating system. You then heat less of the house. Surprise, surprise, the less space you heat the less money it costs. That of course assumes you are going to be quite happy to have unheated rooms in your house and don't have to worry about pipes freezing in the unheated areas.

The downside to closing registers of your forced warm air system, if that is what you have, is you can adversely affect the overall efficiency of the system, particularly if you have a gas or oil furnace. For electric it shouldn't be so much a problem, other than the air that does get heated will get warmer than it is now, and will be pushed with a little bit higher pressure through the ducts, so you can lose air through leakage and radiation from the ducts.

Infrared heat works best if the heater can project the heat directly onto a person. Think how sunshine feels. It's the same principle, radiant heat. Using IR to heat air which then heats you is seriously inefficient.

Do you have natural gas available? If so change to it. If not then look at moving to a variable speed air to air heat pump like Mitsubishi or Daikin. If you have acreage look at a geosource heat pump. The ground is a great place from which to extract heat.

Designing and installing a proper heating system in a home is not child's play. Never, ever, trust an HVAC person who says, "You have so many square feet of floor space, you need this size system." If an HVAC man does not use computer s/w to design the system for your house, in your area, he should not be hired to do the work. He will waste your money over the long haul.

In my area natural gas is the way to go, and good insulation. We all are going to lose our hard earned dollars due to the governments fake global warming solution. They are forcing us stop to using coal fired power plants, or major supplier of electric energy.

No problem, in a country that has few working people, a 33% increase in electric bills won't be a problem, at least the bigger bills will be easier to read thru the clean air.

I also have some beach front property for sale in the Rockies. Jim

No, they don't save money.

The best heaters are either piped in natural gas or what the rest of the wold calls "split air conditioners"

I have a Sharp unit in my bedroom and it takes about 45 Watts on average with bursts to 85W when it needs to cool or heat.
http://www.sharp-world.com/products/minisplit/
A ceiling fan tends to use 85 watts.

There is an outdoor unit as well as an indoor unit and they are connected with some pipes and the indoor unit has a condensation pipe that must run down hill.

Today it has hit 117F here in Australia and two units have kept 5 rooms nicely cool and used so little power that I don't care.

There is a factor known a CPO or efficiency. Standard electric heaters use 1 Watt to make 1 Watt of heat. The quartz heaters tend to make heat in a range that feels warmer but still only make one watt of heat for every watt of electricity. The new split systems make 6 watts of heat for every watt of electricity giving them a COP of 6. American heating and cooling companies love to use terms like BTU or tons of cooling but an average person makes 170 Watts of heating in a room and a old 100W light bulb make 100 watts of heating too. It is much easier using watts when you can add them all up and figure what you need.

Since our electricity is among the cheapest in the country, and the gas utilities have a license to steal,
we switched to all electric over 30 years ago. (and have saved thousands!
Even so, good insulation and energy star windows save so much money that they pay for themselves
almost before you can finish the post-project clean-up.

-tim wrote:The new split systems make 6 watts of heat for every watt of electricity giving them a COP of 6.

I'd have to see the tech data sheets to believe it's that high. More likely COP at best is 3 to 4, and then it depends on the temperature difference between the source and load.

American heating and cooling companies love to use terms like BTU or tons of cooling but an average person makes 170 Watts of heating in a room and a old 100W light bulb make 100 watts of heating too. It is much easier using watts when you can add them all up and figure what you need.

The B stands for British! Hmmm, where do you suppose we got that? Your national ancestors, maybe? It's such a good term we don't want to abandon it!

Hey, let's start a word war on metric vs. English measurement system! That'd be something different for us!