Cool Ways To Heat Your House: How To Save Money On Your Home Fuel Heating Costs

Pamphlets and web pages with tips on how to reduce home heating costs are filled with suggestions that are usually either obvious ("Turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater"), time consuming ("Install a second pane on all your windows and reinsulate your attic") or impractical ("Move to Barbados').

Below are what, we hope, are some slightly less obvious suggestions. For this article we are assuming that you have a typical western house heated primarily by oil or natural gas.

Turn your thermostat down to as far as you are able without putting your pipes in danger of freezing. And then produce the majority of your home heat through electric heating devices.

There are two reasons mostly-electric heating strategy could very significantly cut your home heating bills:

1. These days, electricity is much cheaper than oil or gas.
2. Electric heating devices provide localized heat within your house. With oil or gas you are probably heating your entire home -- including the rooms no one is using.

The key to efficiently heating your home with electrical devices is to develop a plan. Start by asking where in your house you need heat and when you need it. In the bedroom(s) at night, in the bathroom in the morning, in the living room and kitchen in the evening -- chances are that you can predict what rooms in your house will need heat when.

Next, obtain the electric heating devices to meet your needs. These devices have improved greatly over the last decade or so. They are no longer the ugly fire hazards they once were. A rundown of your options:

Electric fireplaces, once a staple of 1970s cheesy decor, have come of age! Today their faux fire effects are no longer created by a fan blowing up on orange and red streamers. An electric fireplace won't be mistaken for one of its wood-burning bretheren upon close inspection but the illusion can work from a distance. Many of the fireplaces themselves are attractive and their red glow adds ambience, as well as heat, to a livingroom, bedroom or dining room.

Some electric fireplaces are designed to be an inset -- to go inside an existing fireplace or casing of some sort. Others are free standing. Either way they don't require an instalation. Simply plug them in. In fact, the smaller ones are light enough to easily move from room to room.

In the course of a single winter an electric fireplace is likely to pay for itself a few times over. Some features to look for when selecting an electric fireplace:

BTU heat output. As a general rule of thumb, 1 square foot requires 10 BTUs to heat. So, a 5,000 BTU heater can heat a 500 square foot rooom. Unfortunately, some electric fireplaces only list their heat output in terms of watts. In general, a 1,500 watt electric fireplace with a quality fan is capable of heating a 400 square foot room.

Heat fans on the bottom of the device. This isn't an issue with an inset electric fireplace but with a freestanding model it is important for the heater to be at the base of the device. This way the top of the fireplace does not get warm, which is safer if you have children and allows you to put plants, or whatever, on top of the fireplace.

A built-in timer. A timer will let you program your electric fireplace to automatically turn on and off at certain times. If you know your family will be getting home at 5pm and using the dining room you can preset your electric fireplace there to turn on at 4:30pm. This way the room will be toasty for your arrival and you won't be wasting energy during the day. If your electric fireplace does not come with a timer you can plug it in via wall outlet timer.

Remote control. Personally, we don't find it useful for an electric fireplace to have a remote control but some people like this feature (especially for a bedroom electric fireplace, so it can be turned on an off from the warmth of one's bed).

A quiet fan and realistic looking "flames." All of the electric fireplaces in our Amazon box (above and to the right) possess these two very important, yet hard to judge in advance, qualities. We suggest stearing clear of VDC brand elecric fireplaces. Brands we recomend include: Newair, SEI, Greenway and, especially, Dimplex.

Non-fireplace electric heaters are even cheaper than the fireplace variety. It is possible that these devices can pay for themselves in fossil fuel savings over the course of a single month!

Electric space heaters come in a variety of types. Choose the one(s) that best fits with your needs:

Desktop. These can heat a small room but are best for providing warmth to a fixed spot. The best desktop heaters are ceramic.

Baseboard ground unit. The advantage of these sorts of heaters is that they are low profile and efficient (since heat rises). However, because they sit at ground level we don't suggest them if you have young children or pets.

Tower unit. These are in essence larger, more powerful, versions of the desktop models. The best ones are capable of heating an entire living room. Look for units that automatically swivel to distribute warm air evenly.

Radiator. These types of electric heaters are not as efficient as the tower units. They also take up more space. But they have one big advantage - because they have no fan they make no noise. Some are also on wheels making them easy to move between rooms.

Panel. Panel heaters have similar advantages and disadvantages to the radiator models. They take up less space than the radiator types and we think they look better. They are also a little more expensive.

Electric blankets work wonders. Overnight, we sleep on top of (not under) our electric blanket. The heat from the blanket rises and is trapped in our comforter. We also like the electric throw blankets, especially when watching TV.

Electric foot warming pads are also surprisingly effective. Or, maybe it isn't surprising when you consider that 85% of your body heat is lost through your feet. (They don't make electrically heated hats so far as we know).

Remember . . .

These various electrical heating devices are meant to be combined to fit your individual needs. With some proper planning you might never have to raise your thermostat higher than its lowest setting.

Here's the easy way to do this: On a windy day light an incense stick and walk around your house pausing at each exterior door and window. If the smoke from the incense isn't going straight up then you have an air leak.

Once identified a leak can be easily sealed with caulk, weatherstripping or foam.

Use Ceiling Fans. Heat rises. Set a ceiling fan to the reverse setting and it will push warm air back down to the ground.

Don't use bathroom and kitchen ventilation fans. You are blowing warm air out of your house when you do.

Attach a sheet of aluminum foil to the wall behind radiators. That will reflect more heat out into the room.

Change furnace air filters once a month. There's very little difference in efficiency between a cheap filter and an expensive one. There's a large difference between changing filters monthly and changing them yearly.

Use humidifiers. Moist air doesn't only feel more comfortable but it holds warmth better than dry air.

Maybe don't use your fireplace. Counterintuitively, if you have a fireplace that's more for ambience—that is, if a fire in your fireplace doesn't throw that much heat out into the room—then using it will increase your heating bill. Why? Because fire requires oxygen; your fireplace fire will pull in that oxygen from air you've already heated from inside your house. Sadly, many fireplaces installed in the last few deceades are more decorative. Consider using a good electric fireplace (see above) or, if you want a real fire, then install a highly efficient woodburning stove.

^{Do you know of another way to save on your winter heating bill that we forget to mention? Let us know . . .}

Note: This article is part of a HubMob, in which a group of writers here at HubPages converge on a single weekly topic. This week's super broad topic: Do it-yourselfers, How-toers and Step-by-Steppers: Teach us something. Click here to see all the other articles on the same topic or check out the two samples, below.