Basically I've got one analog thermostat in my living room that drives 2 huge baseboard heaters, my bathroom and bedroom each have their own units with built it thermostats. Besides the bathroom the rest are over windows, they're the old style double pane aluminum framed windows so most of my heat goes right out the window and I'm getting $150 power bills to heat my 1BR apartment in the winter, and I keep it pretty cold. By comparison my bill was half that with a 10k BTU AC running 24/7 during the hot summer months.
Would I be better off with space heaters? Is it possible to wire in an external thermostat? I'm highly knowledgeable with electrical work, only caveat is I would have to do it in a way that is easily reversible when I move out. Biggest issue is the thermostats suck, the built in ones are 1-10 dials that basically work as Off/On, sometimes I can set them to "slightly above freezing or 85F" depending on how the dial feels at the time. These are 240v heaters with 20A 30A and 40A breakers, so they can probably draw an insane 20kW combined at worst. I have to keep my living room heated as I have a lizard and I don't want him to freeze to death at night. Only use the bedroom heater when I'm home and usually shut it off at night because it gets my room uncomfortably hot.
January 21, 2019 at 07:17AM
