Space Heating - A Comfortable Way to Stay Warm While Lowering Monthly Heating Bills

Several kinds of space heaters offer convenient ways to stay warm while lowering the monthly home-or-apartment monthly heating bills. However, one or two people might find it much easier to space heat their surroundings than what a larger group will find.

Space heaters available.

Because of the rising costs of heating fuel and energy, space heating has increased over the years. For example, the wood-burning fireplaces already existing in homes are being adapted to enclosed wood-or-gas-burning fireplace inserts or to gas-fired artificial logs. Homes not having fireplaces are adding free-standing wood-burning or other energy-supplied room heaters. Some of the space heaters available to the consumer are listed below.

1. Wood-burning stoves or fireplace inserts

2. Electric or gas fired artificial log stoves or inserts, often with added artificial ceramic coals

3. Infrared electric models of all kinds and sizes (e.g., circulating, quartz, reflective, floor model, tower, ceiling or wall mounted with digital remote)

4. Infrared electric models with the element-enhanced ceramic heat-transfer technology

5. Electric models utilizing infrared bulbs with metal heat-transfer technology

6. Infrared bulbs alone (like, in bathrooms)

7. Electric or warm-water-circulated baseboard types

8. Wall or floor inserted room furnaces; natural or propane gas

9. Older-style non-vented gas with fired-clay radiant heaters (These older non-vented models models might be illegal in certain regions.)

10. Free-standing kerosine or kerosine-with-wick models

11. Vented or non-vented natural or propane gas types with catalytic-burning technology

12. Portable fresh-air vented or non-vented propane-gas-tank models

13. Active or passive solar heaters directed to the desired rooms or locations

14. Heat pumps that can both heat or cool, like the ones found in many motels

Which one is best?

This answer depends on how much space heating is needed for how many people, and in how many spots. For example, one or two people living alone in a large or small dwelling can easily hole-up in one room having a bed, desk, radio, TV, computer, telephone, microwave, easy chair, and one small space heater during the cold months. Under these conditions, the home-furnace thermostat can be lower to 55-to-60-degrees Fahrenheit, which is fairly liveable for using the bathroom or kitchen for short periods of time. Also, the kitchen is warmed further by the heat from the refrigerator evaporator and cooking stove.

Moreover, if the one-room space heater is electric, it could add $10-30 to the monthly electric bills, depending on the intensity of the winter weather. However, under these same conditions and depending on the size of the house, a home-furnace setting of 72-degrees could easily add $50-150 to the monthly heating bills, even with some of heat registers closed. Thus, under these conditions, the one-room space heating provides a savings near 80%.

This principle can also be applied to the dwellings having more than two people living in them. That is, this larger number of inhabitants might need a larger room or more than one smaller room for everyone. They might also need several portable space heaters. However, the main idea of locating and living in relatively small spaces during the cold weather is the same, that is, by locating and living in spaces that can be efficiently and inexpensively heated.

A Wood Burning Furnace is a Viable Heating Alternative

Have you considered heating your home or cottage with a wood burning furnace? It is not a traditional method of heating a home but it can reduce your energy costs as opposed to heating with oil or gas. It is certainly a viable alternative in this day and age of high energy costs.

Using a wood burning furnace to heat your home allows you to use a renewable resource. It is also environmentally friendly to use these devices for heating.

When choosing a particular type of wood burning furnace, you have three different types from which to choose. You can find a stand-alone style along with a combination wood and electric furnace. Another style is the add-on type.

Another option for heating your home is the outdoor wood burning furnace. Most of the models available will heat an entire house along with heating the water as well. Not all the models are capable of doing this however. Determine what your needs are before making your purchase.

Once you have a wood burning furnace installed, you need to have a full winter's supply of firewood on hand. This can be costly if you plan to buy the wood. Other options include gathering your own wood. If you have a wood lot on your property, you can cut down any dead trees. If there was a storm during the summer that knocked down a tree, cut the wood up for your own use.

Scrap wood from lumberyards is also a good place to look for free wood. As you can see, you do not need to spend any money on wood if you are resourceful. Do not cut down any live trees, as this is not an environmentally friendly choice to make.

Any outlet that sells wood burning furnaces should be able to match you up with a unit that meets your needs. The unit you choose can add value to your home, so choose wisely.

Many heating and cooling supply stores will carry different models of the wood burning furnace. The big box do it yourself stores may also carry a supply. In addition, you can find many online stores that carry a large supply of these units.

Compare the prices of the units and compare the cost of installation before making your purchase. As you can see, there are a number of factors involved when it comes to finding the right wood burning furnace for your home or cottage.

Wood Furnace - An Efficient and Economical Home Heating System in Three Varieties

In many parts of the world, a wood furnace is the main system used to heat a home. They have many advantages to them and some consider them to be the most efficient of heating devices that you can use. Of course, having access to an adequate wood supply is a must with this type of heating system.

One of the main reasons for their popularity is that their source of fuel is wood, a natural and renewable product. Burning wood does not release toxic fumes into the air. It is, for all practical purposes, a green renewable resource being used in a green product.

When you start shopping for one of these units you will notice that they are broken down into three categories: the central system, multi-fuel and outdoor. Each have their own specific characteristics so you will need to decide which setup you want in order to choose the system.

A central wood furnace system is flexible in that it can be located in virtually any part of the home where you can access the duct and plenum system. This wood furnace doesn't require a large fire so it is not only economical but very efficient. It burns very hot and leaves little in the way of residue but ash.

When the fire burns, it releases heat from all sides which rises. Due to the design and shape of the furnace every wall radiates heat to magnify its intensity. This makes it a neat way to heat a basement which is where many people place their central wood-fired furnace.

Cold air from the room is pulled in and then heated air is sent out into the rest of the house by a fan(s) through the ducts. Depending upon which central wood burner you buy, you can heat several floors of a house.

And just to add to the ambience of your home, you do not necessarily need to place your central wood furnace in the basement. There are even designs that look like a fireplace with a large glass covering that allows you to see the fire as it burns. What a great touch.

A multi-fuel heating system can go either inside or outside. It is a dual system in that it uses wood and another source, such as gas or coal at the same time. For example, wood is burned as the primary source. When the wood supply runs out the thermostat monitors the temperature until it gets down to the pre-set amount. At that point, the furnace switches over to the alternate source, like gas, and begins running again. This continues until you add more wood and it switches back over. This is great in a home where the homeowners may be away for extended periods of time in the winter.

An outdoor wood burning furnace, more properly called an outdoor wood-fired boiler, heats water and sends this hot water into the home where some type of heat exchange is done either via water-to-water or water-to-air. The heat is then sent into the home via in floor radiant heating, radiant baseboards or forced air vents.

An outdoor wood furnace can also be used to furnish water for the home's hot water heater, or even a pool. And better yet, all the mess is outside. However it will require some trenching done to allow the insulated pipes carrying the hot water to the house to be laid

Wood Stove Efficiency - The Secret To Low Cost Heating

Wood stove efficiency varies wildly from stove to stove and yet is poorly understood in terms of what it means for heating your home with wood. Open fireplaces typically operate at about 10% efficiency, basic wood stoves between around 30% and 50% efficiency and modern high performance stoves can reach as high as 90% efficiency.

If you are heating with wood the difference between using a 30% efficient and an 90% efficient stove can mean you burn 3 times as much wood over the course of a year. Not only is this wasteful it is loads of unnecessary extra work; cutting, splitting, stacking, seasoning and then moving your firewood before burning it. Life is simply too short!

What Is Stove Efficiency?

Simply, wood stove efficiency is a measure of how much of the chemical energy in your firewood ends up in your living room, compared to going up the chimney. To measure it you need to very carefully control the conditions and in practice this is done in environmental testing laboratories.

The chemical energy stored in wood is actually quite easy to find. Most types of wood have rating in BTU's per cord. There is some variation between different tree species but basically each kilo of dry wood contains pretty much the same amount of energy. To find the energy going into the stove you weigh the wood before you burn it.

Calculating the heat transfer into the room is harder - you can get a reasonable figure by measuring the temperature of the air in different places, air speeds due to convection and so forth. there are some relatively complex bits of fluid dynamics involved but it can be done. The stove efficiency is therefore the percentage of energy transferred to the room compared to the total amount of wood burned.

These figures are impossible to calculate meaningfully in the home, which is why it is so important to know the rated efficiency as provided by the manufacturer. Generally older style "airtight stoves" are less efficient and cheap imports tend to be very low efficiency, sometimes as low as 20 or 30%.

What Affects Wood-burning Stove Efficiency?

These factors fall into two main categories.

Those which effect combustion, how well the wood burns

Those which effect how well heat is transferred from the stove to the room it is in

We'll look at both of these separately, and talk about ways that you can improve the efficiency of your existing stove.

Combustion Efficiency

Efficiency of combustion concerns how much of the possible energy in the fuel wood is actually released in the stove. As a general rule hotter fires give more complete combustion and so tend to be more efficient. We can manipulate this thorough wood stove design where we insulate the main stove box to keep as much heat IN the main firebox as possible. This seems counter intuitive when we are trying to get as much of that heat as possible out of the stove!

The hotter the stove is the more the chemical structure of the wood breaks down to smaller and smaller molecules as it burns. The very smallest of these are carbon monoxide and hydrogen. If we have a cooler stove the wood breaks down far less and the larger molecules do not burn properly and pass up the chimney as smoke.

High temperature is only the first step - to make the most of these small, ready to burn, molecules we need to add extra oxygen. The best of the modern stoves add preheated air to a separate part of the firebox where the combustion gases are burned. This is usually referred to as a secondary burn. If we choke off the air these molecules go straight up the chimney without releasing their heat energy in the stove - this is both polluting and wasteful. I've heard it described as "turning down the heating by blowing out the gas but leaving the tap running". The best modern stoves have this secondary air carefully regulated, sometimes beyond the control of the stove operator. This is to help the stove meet air quality regulations but the added benefit is the boost in efficiency!

Turbulence within the stove helps mix the gases so that all parts of the flame have sufficient air to burn. Open wood fires tend to have "lazy" flames and the same can be seen in some wood stoves if you turn the air supply down. Designing the air inlets so that they create turbulent high velocity jets of air yields a nice clean burn.

Heat Transfer

Given that we need the firebox as hot as possible the question remains how to get as much heat as possible from the stove before the hot gases go up the chimney. In an existing stove there is nothing we can usually do about the stove internal features - we might be able to direct the flue pipes around the indoor spaces a little and gain more heat that way. Sometimes we can install a heat exchanger in the chimney pipe, above the stove itself.

The best modern stoves have this heat exchange component built in to the design, so that they extract as much heat as possible from the gases before they reach the chimney.

External to the stove we sometimes improve efficiency marginally by installing a wood stove fan. These increase the flow of air over the surface of the stove, increasing heat transfer to the room. The improvement is small and given the price tag you may find a new stove a better investment!

Are High Efficiency Stoves A Good Investment?

Stoves with efficiencies approaching 90% cost considerably more to purchase because the interior design tends to be a lot more complex and the quality of workmanship tends be be higher. You may consider this a good investment if you do a lot, or all, of you heating with firewood. Firewood costs around $200 per cord (varies considerably with location and type of wood) and upgrading from 30% efficiency to 90% may save you many cords worth of wood over a heating season.

If you are buying a stove for using a few evenings per year then a cheaper stove is probably adequate.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Pellet Stove Heating for Your Home

A pellet stove burns its fuel very efficiently because most pellet stoves have three burn chambers. The first chamber is the main pot in which the pellets burn. The combustion of the pellets produces gasses which are burned in the second chamber when the stove becomes hot enough to ignite those gasses. The third chamber gets hot enough to burn the carbon residue. Each combustion chamber reduces the ash produced and produces more heat.

Most pellet stoves are beautiful in design and look great in your home. The glass front of the stove shows the flame which is so romantic and warm on a cold winter night. These factors add value to your home with the installation of a pellet stove.

Because pellet stoves burn so efficiently, there is very little residue or ash to haul away. The ash falls into a pan or bucket at the bottom of the stove and is easily removed for disposal. The ash is also an excellent fertilizer for all your plants, shrubs and trees.

There are a few disadvantages to a pellet stove, too. The stoves can be expensive. The initial cost of the stove will be at least $1,000 with very fancy or exotic models going into the $5,000 range. Installation requires parts not included with the stove even if you do the installation yourself which is very do-able. Hiring the installation will cost an additional $500 or so depending on the configuration of the chimney and the area in which you live.

Pellet stoves burn pellets which must be purchased, hauled and stacked in an easily accessible area. In moderately cold areas with overnight temperatures in single digits, a larger size pellet stove will burn about one and a half to two forty pound bags of pellets a day. At a cost of $5.25 per 40 lb bag, that's about $315 a month for the cold months in fuel costs over and above the cost of the stove.

Another disadvantage is that a pellet stove will not be integrated into your heating system unless you are installing during new construction. Even then, many house plans leave alternative heat sources outside the home's heat distribution system. What that means to you is that the pellet stove will probably not heat your entire home even if the stove is installed in a central area in your house.

These advantages and disadvantages are important points when considering the purchase of a pellet stove. The return on your investment may not occur for several years and you may not get an efficient use of all the heat the pellet stove can produce. The stove will look beautiful in your home and feels great on a cold winter night.