Originally Posted by rshaw125
Originally Posted by gathermewool
1980
I imagine the code has been upgraded since then for minimum insulation.Maybe several times. If you follow the show This Old House they are currently doing a
house in your part of the country. With energy efficiency being a main focus. Net zero. They are actually installing the latest super efficient heat pumps.
You're very likely right. I'll likely have someone come in before next winter and work on upgrades. I know for sure that the blown-in insulation (not fiberglass, but the other stuff that looks like shredded paper) has settled a good amount. Upon inspection, it's a few inches from level with the top of the joist.
Originally Posted by AZjeff
Can't imagine a 2 month old baby in a 55 degree house. Yeah you keep him/her bundled up but still.
Your situation with no duct work sounds like a great application for a mini-split heat pump system. Unfortunately electric baseboard is probably the least desirable type of heating and surprising it was used in a house in New England. Someone was keeping costs down.
I wouldn't be afraid of the all electric house in general, we lived in an all electric house for 13 years and our total utility bills were the same or less than just about anyone we compared with. 1985 spec house, nothing special, 6 inch wall studs and lots of blow in insulation in the attic, forced air. Everyone is always curious when they hear all electric and want to compare.
Our two month-old stay very cozy. If she's out here with me, be both snuggle beneath a heated blanket. She conks out within a few minutes almost every time.
We also make sure she's always dressed to be warm, with a very thick, soft blanket to keep her warm and cozy.
Besides, as I mentioned in the other thread, we turn the heat up if we plan to spend any appreciable time out here (e.g., to watch a movie, do chores, spend time out here just for the heck of it, etc.) We just prefer to stay EVEN warmer in our bedroom, which is very convenient during these coldest of days.
We just turned down a Power Pay Agreement with a local solar vendor, but my plan is to have solar installed when we replace our roof in ~5 years. Using the majority of our south-facing roof (and with half a dozen panels on the north side), they were able to calculate size a system for 85% of our use over the past year, including the $575 we paid for our first full month here last January.
Originally Posted by PimTac
This situation sounds like an ideal one to get some different units installed. If your utility has a energy saving discount on new installations that would make it more enticing. Your return on investment should be short. The mini split systems are a good place to start.
I'll have to look into that, thanks.
Originally Posted by 69GTX
Originally Posted by gathermewool
In our master bedroom we typically keep a ceramic heater running, along with a filter running while we sleep, to keep the air moving.
How many square feet is your house? Having a cement wall basement is a big help.
A 1500-2500 watt portable heater can be quite the drain. Last year I thought I'd try keeping the garage above 40 deg F all winter with a 1500 watt space heater. It doubled our electric bill from around $100 to $200/mo. For our 1960 1000 ft2 house with original siding, insulation and windows, we run around 1000 gallons of fuel oil per year plus $1200 in electricity...about $300/mo for everything with base board heat. What's the difference if the base board heats near the walls/windows? You're still heating the same air that will come into your house. And if you don't heat close to the walls, you will sweat your keister off if you hang out near the walls with the heat on. Shooting for 62-64 deg F in winter and 78 - 80 deg F in peak summer AC. Other than Jan-March and July-Sept New England is pretty temperate.
Total is 2600 ft^2, but that includes the "finished" section of the basement. I don't recall the exact number but more than 2/3 of the square-footage is upstairs.
I use the ceramic heater in the room, because the rotary-style, live-voltage thermostat in our room and bathroom are both wildly inaccurate. A fraction of a turn sometimes results in big fluctuations in temperature.
Originally Posted by StevieC
My brother is in Boston and has gas heating, gas dryer, gas stove, gas water heater and his bill is about $150 / month for electricity. So you having electric everything I could see it being $500/month. It's the heat that is killing you and/or hot water if that is electric. Those are huge users of electricity no matter what you have them set to, in comparison to things like a washing machine or a fridge.
Our electric hot water heater concerns me the most. I don't recall exactly how old it is, but I believe it's at least 15 years old. When I flushed it last Spring a lot of minerals and brown water flushed out. It actually took a lot longer than I expected for the effluent to become clear.
Originally Posted by ecotourist
You need a heat pump. We had much the same situation - only heating part of the house using a wood stove and baseboard heaters yet large electricity bills. We put in a heat pump and now heat the whole house and our electricity bills are lower. I don't really know how much we saved as we keep the whole house comfortable now. I'd never go back.
You might also look at your insulation and the sealing around windows and doors. That can make a big difference as well.
How cold does it get up there? Do you have any issues with reduced performance in extremely cold weather? We're pretty mild here, but do get at least a weeks or so of cumulative single-digit or lower weather every year.
Originally Posted by Bjornviken
Invest in geothermal and save$$$
They would have to dig up so many boulders in the ground to make that work! I'm not sure it would be an easy project here.
Originally Posted by edwardh1
dryers also suck in cold air from outside
Not ours. it sucks in from the basement, which is not heated.
Originally Posted by Donald
Electric baseboard heat typically has line voltage thermostats. Few if any smart thermostats are line voltage.
All but our living-room thermostat are line-voltage. The living room thermostat only sees low-voltage from a giant relay in the garage, which is directly beneat the living room, and where the sub-panel that feeds the heat is located.
Originally Posted by JLTD
Sounds like your house would benefit from some i sulation, especially in light of heating only the MBr at night.
How are your windows? I had one house where replacing the original 70s windows resulted in a heating bill 40% of what it had been....paid for themselves in about 2 1/2 years.
Windows are around 10 years-old, I believe. The biggest leakers were the two giant skylights in the living room and single in the MBR. We replaced all three this past Fall. I know one of our bedroom windows is a bit drafty, but even it isn't bad. When a thermometer is placed directly on the sill, it reads a couple of degrees colder than the other windows (five total in the MBR/bathroom). Good though, though.
Originally Posted by Audios
Id definitely get that wood stove going jut to get a large heat source going and it will naturaly radiate up to the higher floors. It might make a big difference just to split some logs and give it a shot. Maybe compare next month and try running the wood stove more? My wife would absolutely melt down at 55 in the house!
I've had some issues that knocked me out literally all of last year. My plan was to hunt down as much free wood as possible and burn that. Based on the stoves location in the basement (beneath the kitchen and as far away from the MBR as it can be), it's not economical to purchase wood and burn it to heat the house.
My wife had to acclimatize to the lower temps. In our condo, which we kept warm (FOR CHEAP!), she would walk around in booty-shorts and a t-shirt all winter. Now, she has been forced to wear a long-sleeve shirt and leggings...tough life, she lives...
Originally Posted by mcrn
Are you sure your payment from December went through?
It did not. That bill was $385.
Originally Posted by thastinger
Buy yourself a "Kill-a-Watt" meter, they are less than 20 bucks. You plug it into an outlet then plug the load into it. It will tell you power consumption of the device
I've got something like a Kill-a-watt to monitor our our home-theater energy usage. Our modem, router, smartthings and everything on standby only uses 33W Nothing else in the house uses as much as our home theater does, besides the ceramic heater in the MBR and the dehumidifiers in the basement. Besides, it only shows plugged-in power.
It would be really cool to see curve for each baseboard-heaters usage!
Originally Posted by Spector
I guess you need to do some research, what was usage a year ago, last month etc and look at the degree days as well. Call the electric company and ask them to look at the meter if everything else seems okay.
Very good point about contacting the electric company - I plan to. I wonder if they have the ability to calibrate the current meter and whether they would charge me for that or to replace it.
Usage last January was higher by ~25kW-hr/day, but we kept the whole house comfortable during the day and watched TV/spent time in the living room every evening.
Originally Posted by LeakySeals
When I was younger renting an apartment I found the worst offenders were the stove and the wall AC. Started using a George foreman and the electric bill went down significantly lol. That apartment had forced hot water which was cheap. Then i moved into first house and it had electric baseboard. Remembering that apartment I swapped over to electric forced hot water and that was a big difference in my electrical bill. And yes I still used the foreman. still use it today.
We cook a lot of relatively small meals, so we invested in nice convection toaster-oven. With convection, the cooking timer starts immediately (no warm-up required) and I'm sure it uses a TON less energy than the main oven. This is also a benefit in the summer, when any heat added has to be taken care of by the A/C units. If I was super anal about it, I'd move the convection oven outside for all summer cooking!
Originally Posted by Rmay635703
Time to put plastic shrink film or bubble wrap over your windows.
That's on my list.
Originally Posted by Vikas
Originally Posted by gathermewool
Update: my wife sucks at math...
The actual bill is $430.72.
December bill: $385.42
My wife rounded up when she read the bill to me.
Luckily for my hermit self, she acts very well in the role as social liaison.
This is worth repeating. OP's bill went up by $45 from December to January. Of course, OP is blaming this on the his wife's lack of math skill . I sure hope for his own sake that he has given zero indication to her about his opinion
Oh, no, I gave her a hard time about it! lol
She's a very smart woman and better than me at many things. Math and engineering-type things are not on that list and she knows it. Besides, she knew that she was marrying a sarcastic [censored] well before she said, "I do".
