Last year, I spent time at night using my computer in my kitchen, which had an open archway to the living room and a staircase to upstairs right off it. To be warm in that kitchen, one had to heat the whole old poorly insulated house. I kept it as low as I could, but I remember 59F being uncomfortable without a ton of warm clothing.
Now I'm living in a different house, and my computer station is in a small "den" room, about 9'x10', with two 60 watt bulbs on, a desktop computer, and an 21" monitor. It has a door that closes.
I've found that I can set the temperature of the house to 58F and yet be very comfortable in the den, with polar fleece but nothing too crazy, just from the heat from 1-2 lamps and the computer, my body heat, and the residual heat from the last heat cycle (in the current case, that was hours ago). (In fact, I bet I could set it to 56 or lower, but for now am just being careful with the pipes and don't want the BR to get too chilly.)
This is a sort of accidental and halfway version of microheating.
It's really a shame that really good zoned heating wasn't the norm in the world. Worse, now open floor plans and high ceilings are more popular than ever for homes, and they lose the small volume advantage that I am currently enjoying.
I bet if compartmentalized floor plans, zoned heating, micro heating, and good insulation were standard in every home, heating fuel needs could be 20% of what they are now. (Just a guessed number; curious what a good study might estimate).
In the meantime, if you have a small room to move your internet browsing operation to for the winter, you might want to try this.
[BONUS: Last night (during Winter Storm "Jonas"), I felt by the front door and there was a breeze coming through it that felt like an air conditioner! Adding all the gaps around the door must have been equivalent to a baseball sized hole right to the outside! I taped it over with duct tape for now, but will need to get weather stripping asap. My mother, whose house this was, lived with the door like that for 10 years.]
EDIT: Huh, I just stumbled onto to something through that microheating link, about the idea that keeping your temperature below, say 65F, may wind up shortening the life of you refrigerator (search that page for "refrigerator"). Yikes. Might want to post a thread here and get some intel on this.
Submitted January 24, 2016 at 12:31PM by Manbatton http://ift.tt/1Sck2CU Frugal
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