We live in a all electric house that has a heat pump. I stay at home with the kids so am home all day. Will turning down the thermastat and using ceramic heater fans to keep the house warm help keep the electric bill down? What we thought is since we will be keeping the house warm with 2 fan heaters the heat pump does not run,. We assume that the heart pump usses more electricty haveing to come on insterad of running the fans. Are we right or are we increasing our electirc bill by using the ceramic heater fans. thanks!
Ceramic Fan Heater Efficiency
We could get really cRaZy answering this question, but we'll save that for later. Let's look at it this way. IS IT CHEAPER TO USE A HEAT-PUMP OR CERAMIC HEATER FANS TO HEAT THE WHOLE HOUSE? This question is very easy to answer. The heat pump is about 450% MORE efficient than your electric resistant heaters (the ceramic heater fans); UNTIL it gets to about -10 to -30 deg F; THEN it is about the same. (This depends on the SEER rating of your heat pump, but I promised we wouldn't go there.) IS IT CHEAPER TO USE A HEAT-PUMP OR CERAMIC HEATER FANS TO HEAT A COUPLE OF ROOMS IN A HOUSE? Well, this one is kinda a trick question. IF you closed off some rooms and did not ACTIVELY heat them, then the heat-pump would STILL be more efficient; because the heat-pump ALSO has fewer rooms to heat. Electric resistance heating cannot compete with a heat-pump for efficiency (which is why they are so popular now). Lets attack this problem from another front.Just because you may have lost the battle with your electric resistance heaters, you don't have to loose the war. There's TONS for you to do NOW by making your house MORE energy efficient. Follow the links below to cut down your electric usage, save electricity, and keep that utility bill under control. Hope this helps, +Magnoaldus HVAC Tech
Using the 2 space heaters does reduce the electric bill simply because then you're only heating 2 smaller areas of the house. The reduction in electric bill will be somewhat proportional to the reduction in area heated.
