Sunday, December 16, 2012

Money Saver - Fred The Radiator Heater

Confession: Trent and I live like Eskimos in the winter time.

Our house is big and heating all of it for the whole winter would be really expensive, and somewhat pointless because we really aren't there a whole lot anyway.   So we don't.  If it's going to be reeeeeal cold, we of course turn on the furnace enough to avoid busted pipes and seeing our own breath inside our house. And duh, we turn on the heater at least on Sundays when our Bible study group comes over.  But for the most part, ole furnace stays pretty bored in the winter and we just bundle up in slippers and sweatshirts and robes and quilts, sometimes all at the same time! 

There is one room in our house, however, that is Toasty McToasterson for the whole winter: our bedroom.  Watching tv or cooking dinner in the cold is doable, but sleeping in the cold is terrible.  So we took a page out of my parents' book and bought ourselves an oil filled radiator heater the first winter we were in our house.  I named it Fred, because I have to name everything, much to Trent's amusement annoyance.  Fred came from Home Depot and cost us about $60.




It plugs into the wall in our bedroom and the oil inside heats up and starts to flow around in those ridges, therefore radiating heat.  There's no blower or fan, no exposed orangey glow.  You probably wouldn't want to give it a hug but if you had to poke it around to move it (it has wheels!) you could without getting burned.  You can simply set it to a constant low, medium, or high heat, or use the thermostat feature which means it turns on and off to keep the room at a certain temperature.  Because it radiates heat instead of blowing heated air around, it takes a little while to heat up a room in the first place but give it a bit of time and, like I said: Toasty McToasterson.

I have no clue how much money we have saved using this method as opposed to heating our whole house, but I'm sure it's at least enough to cover the $60 cost of buying Fred originally.

Disclaimer - This furnace boycott will of course come to an end when we have children living in our house that need to be kept warm and cozy. But as long as it is just us there, we prefer our money saving Eskimo lifestyle.

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