I want to tell you about something that might save you some serious bucks on your winter heating bills: radiant panel heaters.

You may never even have heard of these things, but after we got a couple to test out in our boys' room and master bedroom upstairs, we were sufficiently impressed that we went and bought four more to put in the other rooms. Since then haven't had to turn on our upstairs energy-sucking heat pump once!

Now, before I tell you about the radiant panel heaters, let me give you an idea of why we looked into these in the first place.

Our house has two main floors plus a finished basement. The basement and first floor are heated with gas heat which, even if it's still fossile-fuel based, at least seems to be efficient: the thermostat trips, the heater comes on, runs for around 10 minutes, and then shuts off and stays off for a while, depending on the outside air temperature. When temperatures are in the 40's, it runs about 6 hours per day, and longer if it's colder. Okay, I can live with that.

Upstairs, however, we've got a heat pump up in the attic as the second half of the dual-zone HVAC setup. I've read how efficient heat pumps are supposed to be, but the reality when I look at my electric bill during the winter months is that we get creamed, even compared to the hottest months of summer. It's hard to do good a home test because there are so many variables, but I estimate that - depending on the outside temperature - our heat pump runs around 10 hours per day when it's in the 40's, and if it gets too much colder (it can get down into the teens sometimes), it never seems to stop.

Now, heat pumps supposedly are more efficient if you set them at one temperature and leave them. That's what we did the first year we were in the house, and we almost died from shock at the electric bills, particularly in the winter. I went out and got some programmable thermostats, and that helped a LOT. I've heard arguments both ways, but I'm sticking with my programmable thermostats, thank you very much: they paid for themselves in the first couple months after we bought them.

Anyway, I knew this winter was going to be a lot worse because our utility tripled the price for electricity last July from $0.04 per kWh to almost $0.12, with another price hike scheduled for this coming June. So I started looking for possible alternatives to heat the upstairs.

We decided against oil and kerosene heaters, along with traditional space heaters that have a red-hot heating element and a fan to blow the air around. We actually used one of those for a while in the basement, but we were never really happy with it: it made a lot of noise, used up a fair amount of power (around 2,000 watts or so), dried out my eyes like crazy, and didn't really provide much heat past a few feet away.

After doing more research, I found radiant panel heaters. These are one of those things that don't seem like they should work, but they really do. They're basically flat panels made of a variety of heat-resistant materials with a wire core heating element embedded inside. They don't get nearly as hot as traditional space heaters, and they put off heat just as if you were standing in front of a fireplace, so you don't need a fan to try and blow hot air around. And, to top things off, they don't need nearly as much electricity to run (usually a few hundred watts, give or take).

Okay, that sounds good, right? Then, when I found out about Econo-Heat panel heaters, which you can find at www.eheat.com or on Amazon, they sounded even better. The Econo-Heat radiant panel heaters are easily mounted on the wall, and in addition to the radiant heat from the panel, they produce a lot more heat from convection.

How the convection part works is that these panels are mounted on spacers that create a gap of around an inch between the panel and the wall. The air in that gap warms up and rises, drawing more cold air into the space behind the panel. After the heater's been on a little while, it creates a constant flow of cold air in through the bottom and hot air out the top of that gap that helps to heat up the room. No fans, just basic physics.

And on top of that - among other positives touted by Econo-Heat - this panel heater only uses 425 watts of electricity. That's about as much as an electric blanket, and a heck of a lot less than the stinkin' heat pump must use (somewhere around 4,000 to 5,000 watts)! [Note: I recently checked the wattage of the Econo-Heat using the Kill-a-Watt meter, and found that my panels are actually drawing only 395 watts each.]

So, that was the claim. At a cost of about $90 each (although right now they're on sale for about $80) I decided to take the plunge and order a couple to test in two of our upstairs bedrooms.

Test room #1 was our boys' room. Econo-Heat says that the optimal room size for one heater is 100 square feet, but the boys' room is 156 square feet, so that's quite a bit larger than one panel is supposed to handle.

Test room #2, though, was the over-the-top challenge: our master bedroom, which is 266 square feet, has a cathedral ceiling, three large windows, and sits over the garage, which is currently poorly insulated.

Both heaters were attached to timers that had the heaters come on about 7 PM and turn off around 7 AM, and we turned the thermostat on the heat pump down to 55 degrees. The central air downstairs was set at 67 during the day, and 60 at night.

The results? Well, for our boys' room (56% larger than the recommended size), we found that one Econo-Heat panel made it quite comfortable in the room, keeping it between 67 and 70 degrees. The heater seemed to work best with the door closed, as the temperature in the hallway got considerably cooler during the night.

As Econo-Heat claims, the panel heater makes no noise and is not hot enough to burn when touched (although you definitely don't want to lean up against it!). While there was a mild smell when they were first turned on (I think from the little inserts that separate the mounting screws from the panel itself), that went away completely after a day or so.

For our master bedroom, one unit couldn't handle the load, which is as we expected. However, when we added a second unit, with the bed sandwiched between them, we found it was enough to keep the sleeping area of the room at between 65 and 67 degrees: not good enough for short sleeves and tank tops, but quite comfortable for sleeping. If the garage below the bedroom was better insulated or the windows were better quality, I'm sure they'd work even better.

After we had a chance to check those two units out, we went ahead and bought three more: one each for the other two bedrooms upstairs (which we use as guest bedrooms), and one for our master bathroom, which is 105 square feet. We put all of them on timers, and the ones in the guest rooms we just keep switched off and the doors closed unless someone's using the room.

Now, just so you know what our weather's like: the temperatures where we live can get pretty cold: lows in the mid-20s and highs in the mid-40s for December through February. As a matter of fact, today the high barely got above 20 degrees!

But get this: even with temperatures like those, since we installed the heater panels upstairs we haven't had to run the upstairs heat pump. At all. Not once since we installed these radiant panel heaters. I honestly couldn't believe it. But our thermostat has usage statistics, and after I set it down to 55 and we started using the heater panels, it's been consistent: 0 hours of operation.

So, finally we get to the bottom line! How much are we really saving? Well, we spent around $500 for the five heaters, and from looking at our electric bill for January, I estimate that we saved around 400 kWh compared to last January - and it was an average of five degrees colder this year!

At our current average electric rates, that means we saved about $40 that month. Doing some quick estimates based on our gas consumption for the heat downstairs, I think our Econo-Heat panel heaters will save us between $150 and $200 on our electricity bill each year at the current rates. In other words, they'll have paid for themselves in two to three years, which isn't a bad investment!

So that's the green in your pocket. And the green for the country is that I figure I'll have cut back on our electric consumption by around 1,500 kWh for the year: that's our average total for a month of electricity! So that ain't bad, either.

We also don't have to worry about buying new heaters if we move: we can just take the panel heaters off the walls and bring them with us!

Now, one thing I wanted to point out that is very important: like with many things, how much money you might save with radiant panel heaters is going to depend on a lot of things. How cold it gets in the winter, how big your roooms are, how well insulated your house is, how good the windows are, and so on. And in some cases, like if you've got a good gas heater and good rates for natural gas, you might not save anything.

But for those of us with heat-pumps, window units, or expensive gas or oil, Econo-Heat claims that you could save up to 50% on electricity for heating, and I think that's not an impossible claim given the right circumstances. Are we saving 50%? Heck, no. But we're saving plenty to make buying these heaters a very good deal financially: how many investments do you know of where you make 100% of your money back in two to three years?

Finally, while we went with the Econo-Heat wall-mounted heaters, there are other radiant panel heaters out there that may suit your needs. For example, while the Econo-Heat panel heater is only for mounting on walls, there are others that are free standing, plus different sizes to suit different rooms, different wattage, and so on. Amazon has a fairly good selection that pops up if you search for "radiant panel." So look around and choose whatever's right for you.

In closing, if you're coughing up lots of dough for your winter heating bills, do yourself a big favor and look into radiant panel heaters. You could save yourself some serious money, and save the electric grid quite a bit of juice, too!

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	09-04-2007 12:33
	We have been using the econo panels for 2 years now and what a difference-especially in a north-facing den!  Now that they are on sale, it\'s even a better deal. Report

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