electric baseboard: individual rooms or whole house?

Hi Guys, I have a stoker that is awesome, however, I am going to have to shut it down for 5 days (can't trust anyone while I am away to "correctly" use the stove and empty the ash pan) and crank the dreaded electric baseboard heat back on. There are about 16 individual therostat room/closet baseboard registers. People in the house are only using about 3-4 rooms at a time downstairs and at night 3 rooms upstairs, so I would set back the upstairs during the day and only crank the baseboards downstairs to comfort levels and then would set them back and crank the ones to comfort levels upstairs at night reasoning that it was probably cheaper to only heat those rooms being used even with the heat flowing out of the rooms in which it was on and into the other rooms.

Of course, when you turn the room back on, they have to not only heat the room but the furniture and contents in the room and take in cooler air from surrounding rooms where the baseboard is off. All things being equal, electricity usage-wise, do you think it is cheaper to turn all of the heaters on (upstairs and downstairs) and leave it or continue turning them on and off, room/floor by room/floor?

I think for five days just keep them on. It's cold. It says it's 3 outside at my house. I live near Akron Oh.

In rooms not being used just turn the heat off and close the door as long as there are no water pipes in those rooms. Keep the rooms being used at comfort level. If your not going to be home how are going to turn the stats up and down? Electric baseboard heat is fast on the recovery so no need to worry about rooms getting too cold.

If you can turn them down, you will save. Heating back up usues less than leaving it warm all the time.

I was going to leave all of the rooms say at low to mid 60s, knowing they will turn them up when they are in the room because they will notice the cool air in lower heated areas. The concern was thinking more like they won't remember to turn them down.

The electric is very fast recovery to the skin, but when only turned up in the rooms used, it seems like it is always on as heat exits the room also to try to warm adjacent rooms. Even still, the hallway and stairs never seem to get warm with this room by room method, and as you occasionally move through a non-heated area- like the stairs... or to go upstairs for something you get hit with noticeably cooler air.

I had an HVAC guy once who told he that he had never tried it but bet that overall heat usage would be lower by heating all rooms (even unattended rooms) in the house then to use the "heat the contents and room you are in" method. He reasoned that beds, couches, furniture, clothes, walls floors all retain room temps and take a long time to get to the temp of the room when cold but once heated was cheaper to maintain the temp than to keep re-heating and allowing to cool. Does this make sense or would I use more electricity this way?

csstoker wrote:I was going to leave all of the rooms say at low to mid 60s, knowing they will turn them up when they are in the room because they will notice the cool air in lower heated areas. The concern was thinking more like they won't remember to turn them down.

The electric is very fast recovery to the skin, but when only turned up in the rooms used, it seems like it is always on as heat exits the room also to try to warm adjacent rooms. Even still, the hallway and stairs never seem to get warm with this room by room method, and as you occasionally move through a non-heated area- like the stairs... or to go upstairs for something you get hit with noticeably cooler air.

I had an HVAC guy once who told he that he had never tried it but bet that overall heat usage would be lower by heating all rooms (even unattended rooms) in the house then to use the "heat the contents and room you are in" method. He reasoned that beds, couches, furniture, clothes, walls floors all retain room temps and take a long time to get to the temp of the room when cold but once heated was cheaper to maintain the temp than to keep re-heating and allowing to cool. Does this make sense or would I use more electricity this way?

Why don't you set the stoker back to a slow burn and take the ash pan out is your hopper a 65 lb or a 70 lb either way on a 5k to a 10k per hr setting it will go 5 days you will have to shovel the ash out But it beats Paying for Electric heat

This would be a great savings but it is a 65 lb hopper and I might get 2 full days out of it.

The more I think about it, I was wondering if the analogy of the instant water water is relevant. It is supposed to be less costly to just heat the water at the faucet as you use it rather than to heat the entire water tank?

csstoker wrote:This would be a great savings but it is a 65 lb hopper and I might get 2 full days out of it.

The more I think about it, I was wondering if the analogy of the instant water water is relevant. It is supposed to be less costly to just heat the water at the faucet as you use it rather than to heat the entire water tank?

2 days on the lowest setting a 70 lb hopper can go 4 days on the lowest setting According Alaska

http://www.alaskastove.com/cms/index.ph ... &Itemid=32

hum, Alaska has been quoting 2 days!?! 4 days does seem about right. Any problem with letting the hopper run out?

csstoker wrote:.cheaper to maintain the temp than to keep re-heating and allowing to cool. Does this make sense or would I use more electricity this way?

Doesn't make sense. You'll use more fuel to keep them up to temp. No matter what, a room kept cooler saves. When it get's reheated the total will be less than if it was kept warmer all the time. It's physics!

I have a tankless water heater; it's the size of a briefcase. It is reported to save 30-50% on the gas bill. It was twice what a decent conventional 40 gal tank heater costs. It's been great so far. Only drawback is it needs a minimum water flow or it won't come on. I couldn't use a 1.5 gpm shower head, had to go with a 2.5.