Words cannot describe how good it feels to wrap yourself into one of these when you’re cold.
I heat my house with just a heatpump but it can’t quite keep up when it gets well below 10 degrees celcius and I’m too cheap to turn on electric radiators. I bought an electric blanket for 22 euros and I just heat that instead. Even just sitting on it makes a huge difference.
I keep my heat set to 60f/15.55c and use heated mattress pads on my bed and couch to make it tolerable. It has been between -7f/-21.7c and 24f/-4.4c this week, and it gets colder, usually mid January.
The cost to increase my heat from those temps to a somewhat more comfortable temp is literally hundreds of us dollars per month in gas (in addition to just getting to those temps from the outside temp), where the heated pads running 24/7 increase my electric bill by only a dollar or two a month (hydroelectric in my case, so hands down better, price difference aside).
The difference in operating costs is insane between heating an airspace and heating a body.
Heated blankets are a bit of a different thing; iirc they get warmer because they are meant to be above you, but could work the same way with that properly taken into consideration. You don’t get the sudden warm most of the time when using them under you, but it does help keep your core temp up. So lovely!
I’ve done this same thing for years and I love it! I splurged a few years ago and got a sunbeam mattress pad that has wifi so I can turn it on before I get into bed.
Thats chilly, mine is at like 21 downstairs 20 upstairs
Generally speaking, when using resistive heat, it’s best to use them as little as possible. Direct application to your body (electric blanket) is cheaper than heating the air (heat strips in hvac air handler).
Some people think that using one of those oil based electric radiators is cheaper than a heat pump but it’s not.
All resistive electric heaters have the same efficiency, regardless of their shape, methodology, or what the manufacturer prints on the box. That efficiency is 100%, i.e. all of the electricity put into them gets turned into heat, one way or the other. The same amount of electricity (up to and including the locally specified legal maximum for a standalone appliance, which in the US is 1500 watts or roughly 12.5 amps) becomes the same amount of heat. It doesn’t matter if the manufacturer put “for large rooms” or “for small rooms” on the box, or what. 1500 watts is 1500 watts.
However in ideal conditions and specifically for the purposes of heating, a heat pump can achieve efficiency of over 100%. Which sounds impossible, but only until you realize that a heat pump’s method of operation is not to create heat but rather to move heat that’s already there from the outdoors to inside.
Great info, but want to add that heat pump efficency is normally around 300%, which is why they are so cost effective. 1500w in a heat pump is around the same as 4500w resistive.
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Oil-filled radiators, despite being electric heaters, do cost less to run than regular space heaters or electric baseboard heaters if all other things remain equal. This is because the oil they’re filled with acts as a much more effective thermal mass than the air in the room. It takes about the same amount of energy to heat the room to your desired temp, but then the heater can switch off for longer while the oil continues to radiate stored heat into the air.
That’s not true. That thermal mass takes energy to heat too. Whatever “excess” heat stored in the oil was put there when you turned the radiator on.
For an oil-filled radiator to be cheaper to run than a regular electric one, it’d somehow need to be over 100% efficient - which it isn’t. They’re both resistive heaters that convert 100% of the electricity into heat.
always gave me headaches
I got a heated weighted blanket a couple weeks ago and it’s even better than any electric blanket I’ve ever had.
when it gets well below 10 degrees celcius
Can’t relate lol
my apartment stays at 22 C with heater on only in my bathroom, and it’s -20 outside. imagine how nice and warm it is in the summer with this level of insulation
Aren’t the cheap ones also a fire hazard?
Nah, just plug it into the power strip with the space heater and set it up against the hot water heater for maximum cozy.
My furnace has been out for two weeks and I live in Canada. Me and my cats have been living under a heated blanket over the holidays
And 12 volt blanket can run off a solar powered battery, free warmth yay
I have a heated mattress pad, because most of the heated blankets use this garbage digital display crap that breaks easily.
They’re also really nice, placed just under your fitted sheet on the bed… Crawl into a pre-warmed bed that keeps you warm without an overly large/heavy blanket
My old man dog loves my heated lap blanket. I set the blanket on low with a timer while I work from home and my dog stretches out on top of it. Without the heated blanket he curls up into a tight little croissant.
There are USB ones now, including heated clothing/scarves
Can confirm!
Before I got my place sealed up I had a small one I put under my fitted sheets. That with a hefty regular blanket on top and it could get into the negatives before I was ever even slightly uncomfortable.
YMMV, but the cheap one I bought only lasted two winters before the electric part died, while the more expensive two I bought have lasted five years and counting.
I prefer hot water bottles but that’s just me.
I know that electric blankets are much safer than they used to be but I have a lot of anxiety related to fire, so just not for me.
I like electric space heaters, but: I bought a cheap Chinese one a few years ago that somehow rewired itself. Like, the “off” setting became “low heat”, “high heat” became “fan” etc. I took it apart to see how the fuck that could possibly happen. The dial switch included a little roller contact that moved over a printed circuit board sort of thing to determine the setting; if the heater got too hot (imagine that!) the switch solder would melt and then re-flow into a different pattern, causing the switch to work completely differently. Just unimaginably hazardous.
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