Not What It Seems

 This looks like one of the, "what are they thinking" mistake meme pictures we see in ads all the time.

It's actually a really good, energy saving idea.  You see, this room, which was once a screened-in porch, has been closed-in and is now used as an office.  We had hoped that the window you see in the picture plus a door, would allow plenty of heat from the rest of the house into the room.  To our disappointment, this was not so and we resorted to space heaters.  Problem:  It was really showing up on our electric bill.

A 1,500 Watt space heater gives us 5,115 BTU of heat, but the AC unit you see is rated at 5000 BTU and consumes 515 Watts, so the total BTU is 5,000 plus (515 W)(3.41BTU/W) = 1756 for a total of 6756 BTU.  So, instead of getting 3.41 BTU per Watt with the space heater, I get 13.12 BTU per Watt with the AC unit.

Yes, I'm accomplishing this by taking heat from one room and moving it to another.  But, we aren't using the living room during working hours and I don't run the AC after working hours.  So the heat is being moved from where it isn't needed, to where it is needed.

An additional benefit is that while 1,500 Watts is about as high as you can go with a space heater, I can use a larger AC unit if the 5,000 BTU unit isn't enough when it gets really cold outside.