120 Watt Space Heater
 

I haven't turned on the baseboard electric heat yet and it's almost November. Not feeling warm enough and wishing for some heat at my desk, I came up with a solution. Why heat a whole room when I can just heat the area where I am? I now have a 120 watt floodlight bulb mounted under my desk, aimed at my legs. I'm too warm now, and the room temperature has not gone up. This room is about 1200 cubic feet. The leg area of this metal desk is closed on three sides, so I get all the heat from the bulb. The desk surface warms up nicely too. The 120 watt bulb (reflector style) is a bit too much, the heat from a standard 60 watt bulb isn't even noticeable under the desk.

Silent, no fan kicking up dust and uses 8% of the power my space heater would use!

I'll probably break the light with my knees! :eek: I should put a cage around it.

"Extreme zone heating"- I have the patent on it!

extreme zone heating - Google Search

Try a 60 watt heat lamp instead of a regular bulb... No point in lighting an area you aren't viewing, right?

It's 62 degrees in the house right now. Not much sun this week, so the temp has been steadily decreasing. Last year I turned on the heat Nov 1st, but I'll have to turn it on when the wife returns Tuesday.

I heat with gas forced air to 67 degrees F.

I have been using the same set up with a 100 Watt reflector style white heat lamp mounted under my desk in a clip on reflector style base. My cat worships it like the Sun. The white light actually sprays out to light up the room quite well along with an 8 Watt CFL desk lamp. I have one under my workbench at work where I sit at the keyboard also. It warms your legs but also the desk top where your arms are resting so everything you touch is warm. Perfect solution. Everyone that sits at a desk in winter should have one. The one at work is an invisible lizard lamp for stealth but they are expensive and the cheap white heat lamp from the farm store works just as well.

'Tis the season...

Almost time to get out the heat lamp.
And the painted styrofoam panel for the sliding glass door.
And the bubble wrap "blankets" for the upstairs windows.

Omg how can you people handle the cold! If it's under 70F I'm uncomfortable, 65 I'm cold and under 60 I'm freezing. My comfort zone is 78-85, but I don't mind 110+ as long as I have a straw hat and access to water.

You get used to it. I visited Cal in the "winter" and ran around in t-shirts and shorts while the natives bundled up like they were in Siberia. :rolleyes:

52 in the house these days. I refuse to start the furnace before Novembrr.

Have electric baseboard heating. And HUGELY inefficient sliding glass doors in both my bedroom and living room - as in, you can feel the wind blowing in through them.

I'm in Central NY and have National Greed as electric provider. They quadroupled my rates last winter. So this winter the heat is staying off until it's not possible to survive without it any more.

I have a few incandescent bulbs that may get turned on to do a bit of zone heating if needed.

Get a foam panel at Lowe's Depot. Trim to fit with a razor knife, white duct tape it in place, and if you paint it then it looks like it belongs there.

and i jumped into this thread expecting someone to claim they have some miracle heater that only uses 120 watts but puts out the heat of a 1500 watt unit.....

so, as you can imagine, i'm pleasantly surprised to see a realistic use for "only" 120 watts of heat. i may have to impliment something similar, the corner the computer desk is in gets noticably colder than the rest of the room, a ~100 watt heater pointed out/up may work well enough to make using it in the winter bearable.

may I offer...the heated keyboard...
 

http://www.amazon.com/V8-Tools-Heate.../dp/B000O3K93G


There are plenty of tools to get this done.

You can get sit-on heat pads.

You can get cheap chinese ceramic emitters that the reptile crowd uses:

75W 100W 150W 200W Ceramic Emitter Heat Lamp Grow Plant Lamp Pet Reptile Heater | eBay


and heat bulbs, as already mentioned.


troy

Just get an Amish heater! :D

We set the heater at 62 and try to let the sun in all day long to warm up the house.

We also bake more often in the winter, since oven = 100% of the heat goes into the house, whereas furnace = ~90% efficient and loses some of it's heat through the flue vent.

We don't use fancy personal heaters... we just dress warmer, even inside the house. I still sleep as I was born, just cover up a bit tighter.

Flower Pots & Tea Lights Heater

I have a couple hundred tea lights... I'm gonna try this.

That's the miracle heater he was joking about at the top of the page where you can heat a whole room with three tea light candles because of the magic orientation of the flower pots.

one of many hilariously ineffective "heating solutions" that popped up last year, complete with MANY youtube videos of "proof" that they worked.

in fact:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post399930

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post399970

i remember doing the calculations for this exact situation.

The office of the truck company I use to work for was slightly warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer than the garage it was inside. To keep the receptionist happy they put one of these under her desk. http://www.sears.com/cozy-products-c...&mktRedirect=y

I know winter has arrived when I unzip my super-duper cold-weather sleeping bag to use as yet another quilt layer.

Glad I am not the only one, the apartment is usually 50-62 degrees during the winter so a sleeping bag is the only logical choice for a nice toasty bed.

I do take a hot shower in the morning though, gotta have a perk.

Also has anyone found a CHEAP, heating pad to use on furniture.

I have been trying to convince my folks to heat their chairs to keep the heat off (now that they are old they want it hot during the winter and pay dearly when they do)

Not really sure if a heated blanket or what would work for the task, did I mention cheap?

Also the thing would need enough power the really warm the seat up, a lot of the heated massage deals have so few watts they won't affectively warm you in a 60 degree room let alone 50 degrees.

Ah well.

60-62 in my house all winter, it's not cold till the kid's fight over how gets the dog.

Heating a chair - Use waterbed heating pads inside the cushions. You can set them to a specific temperature and they aren't terribly inefficient.

I still say it's most effective to simply wear loose-fitting, insulative clothing, drink warm drinks and eat warm foods.

Winter is rice and oatmeal time for me. I love rice for breakfast with a bit of cinnamon and sugar, and I love oatmeal, farina, cream of wheat, etc.

Obviously you probably won't bake every day, but baking significantly increases the temperature of the area around the oven, and a circulating fan will help push that heat through the rest of the living area. Baking for longer at a lower temperature is also helpful, for recipes that can be adjusted in such way. Works great as a supplemental heat source, especially on the really cold days when the heater doesn't seem to be keeping up.

Rather than lighting an entire room, focused low-wattage lighting [such as candle bulbs] at or near the areas you intend to sit/stand etc tend to make the best use of both light and heat from the incandescent bulbs.

And while it seems like a lot of work to do it, plain old black water jugs placed in the sun during the day, then brought inside the house at night and placed in/under seating areas will also warm them significantly.

Another thing worth considering is simple black PVC tubing with a 90* elbow penetrating a wall near the floor, then another penetrating near the ceiling. Takes quite a few of them to make reasonable heat flow, but in direct sunlight they can do a heck of a job.

I'm trying something new this winter. Last winter I noticed just how much cold was coming off the windows in our house. This year I have covered all the windows with foil radiant barrier. It makes the house dark needing a light burning, but during the daytime I'm the only one at home and spend 99% of my time in the living room. I use a 1W LED for light in the living room and have (3) 1/4W LED night lights 1 in each bathroom and 1 in the kitchen so I can see how to get around. We already only used the 1W LED at night in the living room while watching television. Usually if I need light in another room it's only for a few minutes at a time and I'll turn on an overhead light with a 9W or 13W CFL bulb. There's a chance there will be sunny days where I'll lose a little bit of heat from the sun, but at night and on cold or cloudy days it will probably more than make up the difference in heat loss through the glass. The radiant barrier will reflect the outdoor cold away from the living space and the indoor heat back toward the living space. I'm also going to get some Velcro with adhesive on them and fix it so I can open and close the foil with little effort on warm/sunny days. During much of the winter by the time my wife gets home from work it's already dark enough she needs light in the kitchen while preparing dinner, so really very little extra cost associated with lighting. We use a vented/thermostatically controlled Monitor kerosene heater for heat. Saturday night the low was 24* here, I filled the heater about 10PM and set the thermostat on 64* for the night during the time we were in bed, between 10PM and 8:30AM we used about a quart of kerosene. Since Saturday night, with lows in the 20's, 30's and 40's, highs in the 60's we've used approximately 3/4 gallon of kerosene to heat approximately 1K SF (extra bedrooms closed off, no heat). I keep the heater set at 64* at night and 68* during the daytime. If this works good during the winter with heat savings I'm also going to try it during the summer with a/c cooling costs. I already have radiant barrier underneath the metal roof on the house. Last winter I heated about 1200 SF on about 150 gallons of kerosene for the winter. Since we moved here in Oct. 2010 and I had the radiant barrier and new metal roof put on the house in spring 2011 our highest electric bill has been just over $100 for the month, with it normally running $70-$90 per month during the summer cooling about 1200 SF and $45-$55 per month during the winter

A radiant barrier probably isn't going to help much. Your biggest window losses are air leaks and conduction through the glass (especially if you have single-pane windows). A better cheap/free solution is bubble wrap. Tape it to reduce air infiltration, and it still lets a good bit of light through. Also some good insulating drapes for nighttime.

It's amazing how much frost you'll get on the inside of your windows if you cover them on a cold night!

Clear bubble wrap lets the light (such as it is) in. Winterizing plastic sheeting keeps the air out.

My wife has been telling me it's time for me to get going on those for the winter. I remember when it annoyed her! :D

But that's not primarily from radiation loss. It's conduction + convection: the window glass conducts heat to the outside, inside air right next to the glass becomes cold, cold air is more dense so it flows towards the floor, drawing warmer air from the room up to the glass to be cooled in turn...

Also frost insulates better than ice which insulates better than glass :)

So if your window is frosted it is increasing its R value a bit.

Also condensing liquid releases heat.

I just mounted a 250w heat lamp beneath my monitor and aimed at my keyboard and torso. It's plenty to keep my warm in the office, so I've got the thermostat set to 50 degrees between 8am-5pm when it's just me at home. If I run it 40hrs per week, I'll spend $4 month in electricity.

I might try a 150w bulb next since 225 (measured) is more than adequate.