Electric Heater---How is it?

[AntMan530]

I heard electric heaters (built in apartment/house ones) are super expensive. How expensive is it? to have?

 

[wedi42]

to heat a builing 24/7 with electric is generally twice as expensive as natural gas.
but if used for spot heating only when a room is occupied you can save money overall

 

[MustangSVT]

its good

 

[amdskip]

We have an electric furnace in our apartment and this winter it is paying off compared to having a gas furnace. It really isn't that much more to run than air conditioning.

 

[duragezic]

At our 2br apartment last year, I'd say the electric heat was better than having to pay gas or oil. Our non-winter elec bill was about $40-60/mo for two people, and during winter it jumped as high as $120-130/mo. So figure $30ish per person per month for heat which I'd guess is a little cheaper than gas. Plus with electric we had separate controls for all of the rooms, and those little heaters really cranked nicely and kept the place warm.

 

[SampSon]

It depends on what type of heating you are talking about.
Electric baseboard heating has it's advantage due to the fact that it is inherantly zone controlled heating.

 

[DVK916]

Originally posted by: SampSon
It depends on what type of heating you are talking about.
Electric baseboard heating has it's advantage due to the fact that it is inherantly zone controlled heating.

Not always, our electric heater is not zone controle, it heats the whole house.

In winter our bill tends to be between our summer bill and spring and fall bill. Around $70 a month.

 

[Mark R]

It depends on the type of heating, how it is controlled, and how you pay for your electricity.

If you pay full price for your electricity - then electric heating is by far the most expensive way of heating (in terms of fuel costs).
However, if you get the electricity for heating at a discount, then it can be only slightly more expensive than gas or other fuels. However, a lot depends on the heating controls, etc.

It's taken me quite a while to work out how my electric heating works - however, now that I know how it works it I can program it to be reasonable economical. The people who lived here before me clearly hadn't worked it out - because when I moved in the full-price meter reading was enormous, and the discount meter reading was far lower than I would have expected.

If you only heat rooms that are occupied, only when they are occupied, then this can work out quite cheap - this is easy with electric, but much harder with gas.