Zone Heating Strategies with space heaters

You can divide your home in different heating zones, that is, different areas with different heating temperatures. That’s a way of getting more comfort or energy efficiency and energy savings. These strategies vary a lot, and can use furnaces and other central heating systems, or space heaters. See: Zone Heating with Furnaces and central heating systems.

This page deals with the use of space heaters in zone heating strategies.

Zoning
Zoning consists in dividing a house in different areas involving different heating (or cooling) strategies, according to different needs, patterns of occupancy and schedules.

The pre-conditions of zone heating with space heaters

An effective zone heating strategy using space heaters demands some pre-conditions, namely for those living in a cold-harsh climate. The layout/floor-plan of the house and the degree of insulation and separation of their different parts are particularly important.

An open-space design or the impossibility of keeping the supplemental heating in a part of the house will put into question the zoning approach.

Space heaters and heating zones

If you have a central furnace, or a heat pump or boiler or other system controlled by a single thermostat, you can turn down the thermostat a few degrees (say to 60ºF/15ºC) and use one or more space heaters to supplement the heating in the main living areas when necessary.

That’s easy to accomplish and can reduce significantly your heating bills by some hundred dollars yearly. That's a common strategy.

Important note: If your home is a two-story building with loosely separated areas, if you are considering using a wall-mounted space heater, it’s highly advantageous to install it in the lower level of the house. Since heat rises, leaks in the lower floor will benefit the upper floor.

Using a high-capacity space heater

If your home isn't too large and has very high levels of insulation and air-sealing, a high-capacity space heater – a gas wall-mounted, a gas or pellet stove, or other medium-high capacity space heater - can fulfill the more basic heating needs, namely those of the living room area.

Other heating needs can be supplied by smaller space heaters, in the other heating zones of the building.

This strategy aims to replace central heating systems. But, in colder climates, to be effective and to provide enough comfort, it requires very high levels of insulation all over the envelope of the building.

Using electric radiant heaters with occupancy sensors

Electric radiant heaters heat like the sun; they aren't intended to heat the entire room where they are located; just the people in it, directing a stream of warmth to them…

Electric radiant space heaters can be part of some zone heating strategies.

These heaters – installed in a wall and focused to the place where people are going to stay – can provide good directional, spot and personal heating.

And since they also produce an immediate stream of heat, combining them with occupancy sensors (to turn on the electric heater when people enter the room and off after they leave), can provide a reasonable amount of heating and comfort at low cost.