Thanks for the picture! And the explanation! I wouldn't have thought of this.

After looking it up, I'm sure this must be a thermopile system. That or mercury vapor maybe?

I shut it off last night to cool down, but by time I remembered to check if it was cool enough to install the logs and start looking closely, it was bedtime. I won't have time today or tonight, busy day ahead, but I will report back when I do!

I'll dust it first to be sure, but I think you're right, it might need turned down a tiny bit. Thank you!

In theory, it could be cheaper since you'll be essentially heating one room at a time. Joule/resistance heating is typically expensive despite being basically 100% efficient because it draws a lot of power.

If you have a window that can be opened, you could look into a portable heat pump. These have an air duct that exhausts hot/cold air out the window. Not as efficient as a central heat pump and more expensive than space heaters but you'll make up the cost in a few months of electric bills.

If that's not an option and you still want to go with space heaters, keep in mind that electric space heaters are one of the top causes of residential fires. Safety is a legit concern.

Invest in a good quality electric heater. Oil filled radiator or "baseboard" if you want to heat the room. Infrared if you want it to heat you. Do not use an extension cord. Do not leave space heaters running when you are not home. When running the heater, periodically feel the wall plate around the electrical outlet, unplug the cord, and feel the prongs. If anythjng is hot to the touch, discontinue use and contact your landlord about having the outlet replaced. High amperage loads + loose connection = fire potential.

If for example it takes you 300kJ to heat your room one degree, gas will get you to that degree with about 380kJ whereas it will take an electric heater well over 500kJ.

This just remotely is not how physics work. Exsctly what do you think happens to that 200 kJ delta with electric energy ? Where does the extra 200 go ?

It's not necessarily about 100% being the best possible heating efficiency^1^, but rather that the exact method is irrelevant. Any two pure electric heating methods will always, by definition, be equally efficient at heating a space.

Also, not dispering the heat isn't really an issue in continuous long term operation. Free convection and radiation will eventually disperse the heat for you (heat in = heat out in the long term equilibrium is a fundamental law of physics, and for a given (mostly) matter tight space in given exterior conditions, the heat out is determined exclusively by the average interior temperature. Same amount of heat in must always lead to the same average internal temperature in the long term equilibrium), in fact the vast majority of european homes, which often lack central ducting, rely entirely on passive heat distribution in their most common heating methods, under floor and radiators.

1: And using the term efficiency (useful work out/total work in) isn't really accurate for heat pumps, the correct term is coefficient of performance (cop = total heat moved/total work in). Calling a heat pump 400% efficient is a bit like calling a fuel truck 1000% efficient, because it used the energy in 10 liters of diesel to move the energy contained in 1000 liters of diesel down the road) The useful work a heat pump is doing is the act of moving heat, not the amount of heat moved, and since the act of moving heat theoretically takes zero energy in the ideal case, see maxwells demon, technically heat pumps all have zero efficiency

Is it a thermopile millivolt system? I just fixed mine last week and when it was hissing it was because I lit the pilot with the grub screw too wide open. There’s a tiny little brass screw that is right next to the pilot control knob that allows you to adjust the pilot flame size to get the right coverage on the thermopile.

Of course it could also be dust.

100% efficiency isnt that good when heat pumps can comfortably push 400-500%, and its not always the full story. An electric heater that converted the electricity to heat, but doesnt disperse it around the room effectively is 100% efficient, but still kinda useless.

Insulation is a big win though. Honeycomb blinds are not terribly expensive, but can do a fantastic job of insulating large windows. You can get them made to size via aliexpress, and its surprisingly cheap.

Did it lead to any clucking side effects?

I was twisting the valve ever so slightly to demonstrate that the noise can come and go with the pilot still lit.

But yes, the flame was changing shape slightly when it was doing it by itself earlier, so something is definitely happening.

Others say dust up in the nozzle, which makes sense it sat unused for awhile

Thanks! I'll let it cool down and give it a dusting

Good to know thanks!

Yeah I won't leave it in-between like that, does seem a bit sketchy.

I'll add, as I just fixed this at my parent's house, if you get it opened up, an old toothbrush to scrub the end of the pilot gas line helps here too. Just be careful not to move the sparker.

A lot of times this can just be from dust buildup on/around that nozzle (I'm almost sure that's not the proper terminology tho). An easy thing to try is shutting off the gas to the insert and taking a can of compressed air to that nozzle and everything around it. If you can easily take off the panel in front of it, even better, spray all the dust out you can.

Is this dangerous?

The hissing noise is not. Turning your pilot knob to some in-between setting is.

I know nothing about the systems in question, but it seems the "hiss" is in time with the flame changing shape. So, perhaps a blower or valve turning on/off, open/closing.

Again, I know nothing, but if it's a sound from the equipment turning on/off, I don't think it would be potentially hazardous. Probably very annoying though.

I used to have ir chicken lamps over my basement bed. Really cozy.

Gotta jump in to recommend electric blankets!

I personally keep my propane heated house around 19 C and do use an electric heater that's also a fake fireplace in the living room when I wanna be extra cozy. Not sure about the efficiency, but it's pleasant.

Electric blankets are great for heating you (and potentially your feline friends) rather than the air.

We keep some electric blankets and space heaters around in case the furnace shits the bed or we have a power outage. We can power them from our mobile generator as we don't have a connection to the breaker box and the furnace won't burn with our power for the fan (rightfully so!).

Where i live we would need to do the average temperature by 14 degrees to reach your 18 mark.

I don't think that's economically viable

get a heat pump, depending on outdoor temp they're around 5 times more efficient than a space heater.

Get a window unit heat pump for bedroom & living room. They put out twice as much heat for the same amount of electricity

They do and my roofing contractor did this very thing during cleanup this year. Had three of them.

There were still some small pieces of trash here and there, but nothing egregious or metallic.

We had a big magnet on wheels at the shop I used to work at. Could have easily modified it to work in a yard (if they don't already make such a thing).

You just need a surface mount pex sink valve.

If your regular heating is electric anyway, then yes obviously.

Electrically heating a small space uses less energy than electrically heating a big space, that's fairly trivial.

How much less energy depends on how big your entire home is vs. the areas you'd heat with space heaters.

The most efficient solution would probably be IR heaters, as those heat you directly, as opposed to the air, meaning you can keep them off and let the room cool when you're not using it, and turn them on to make you feel warm almost immediate when entering a room, without the need to heat/keep warm the entire room, but that only works when you're staying in more or less the same spot for long periods of time, if you're moving around a lot an IR heater won't do much.

Ask Alec at tech connections. He did this exact test.

The heaters are like $50-60 tops (so another $50 to compeletw the swt) and i also like the white noise aspect of them so they might even be justifiable even if they dont save an insane amount, but I feel likeyou said they form a middle road solution that pretty much almost certainly saves over globally heating the entire place up and there wont be any misery involved no matter which way it goes :)

My cats and I already love having one again so im very tempted to have one for both rooms and let the carda fall where they may

Maybe. Probably.

The most expensive thing you can do is heat all the air in your entire home to be comfortably warm. The cheapest thing you can do is make everything colder.

You’re in the middle with a hybrid solution - using secondary heating to heat up specific areas. Since both heating sources are electric, and electric heaters are practically 100% efficient, it really just comes down to how big the area you need to heat and how long it takes.

For example, if you have a 2 bedroom apartment and you’re using space heaters to heat both rooms and, say, the kitchen, what’s really left? The bathroom? You’ll probably have spend more money buying heaters than you’d ever save on energy.

On the flip side, if you run the main heat low but then every morning your bedroom is cold and you’re miserable for an hour while it heats up, is that really worth the ongoing misery to save not-very-much-money every morning?

If you don’t own any heaters yet, figure out what they’ll cost and what your heating actually costs you. If the savings are less than the energy savings over a couple of years, I wouldn’t even explore this any further. Dropping your thermostat a couple degrees and wearing a sweater inside will get you a lot of the way there.

Another thing you can look at is insulation efficiency. Is your place expensive to heat? That’s because your warm air is escaping. Why? Feel around floor seams, outlets, windows, etc for cold drafts - that’s cold air coming in and forcing you to heat it back up! Sometimes a hole in a wall can be trivially taped over to cut this down. Are the windows especially bad? Keep the curtains drawn. You can even buy plastic wrap kits that you basically stick over the whole window to trap the air. It works well but then you can’t use the window until you take it down in the spring.