Howdy All,
Read through all this and had to join just to post. We use under area rug heating mats for our downstairs and have fallen in love with the product. All our bedrooms are in the basement, and the pellet stove (Harman XXV - love it!) is on the main living floor above keeping us toasty when we want to be. But last winter was the first in our new house, and those basement floors felt coooolllllddd even with large thick area rugs down. I found & bought this product - http://speedheat.us/rug_buddy.htm - and have them in the occupied bedrooms plus one in bathroom and one in the hallway downstairs. LOVE THEM! Low energy use, low cost to use. Keeps the bedrooms nice and even, not hot or cold; we just unplug them if we're going out of town.
It took a day or so before the rooms really felt like they were being warmed using these, but now they are perfect. We use a 5.5'x8' in the master bedroom, a 5'x7' one in the boys room, a 3'x5' in the large bath and a hallway runner one. I like a moderate temp at night for sleeping (not that warm) so we keep the bedroom door open all the time, although this had more to do with the dog and cats and kids it ended up working out the best temp-wise too... For the boys at night we don't close their door, just pull it to halfway and the room warms up noticeably for sleeping. Interior doors are open downstairs during the day and the passive heat rising keeps the edge off things upstairs when we're at work/school. Pellet stove doesn't have as far to start from with these things going, and our electricity bill has not taken much of a hit at all!
Jeez I should be getting paid for this much smarm eh? A kickback at least maybe... 8-/
We just didn't have the budget to put in radiant floor heat into the basement slab as we dearly would have liked to (built our own place, in a year ago last fall) knowing that our bedrooms were going to be down there. These under rug mat things have made an enormous difference for us downstairs. We were using Cadet wall heaters, only on when we were in the rooms and set to between 55-58 degrees when not occupied and they were huge electricity suckers. The units we have were supposed to be fairly efficient etc. but the basement still never felt that warm unless they were cranked on high all the time. Even then the floor area still felt chilly. Now, I happily sit on the floor in my boys room and enjoy being downstairs again. I loved being down there before in the summer heat as it was 15-20 cooler than outside, and at least 10 degrees cooler than the upstairs:D Now we'll just unplug 'em when the weather warms up again. Don't even know they're there.
Sorry about the tome, but thought I'd add a different alternative to backbreaking amounts of experimental ductwork... Anybody else out there using these?
Read through all this and had to join just to post. We use under area rug heating mats for our downstairs and have fallen in love with the product. All our bedrooms are in the basement, and the pellet stove (Harman XXV - love it!) is on the main living floor above keeping us toasty when we want to be. But last winter was the first in our new house, and those basement floors felt coooolllllddd even with large thick area rugs down. I found & bought this product - http://speedheat.us/rug_buddy.htm - and have them in the occupied bedrooms plus one in bathroom and one in the hallway downstairs. LOVE THEM! Low energy use, low cost to use. Keeps the bedrooms nice and even, not hot or cold; we just unplug them if we're going out of town.
It took a day or so before the rooms really felt like they were being warmed using these, but now they are perfect. We use a 5.5'x8' in the master bedroom, a 5'x7' one in the boys room, a 3'x5' in the large bath and a hallway runner one. I like a moderate temp at night for sleeping (not that warm) so we keep the bedroom door open all the time, although this had more to do with the dog and cats and kids it ended up working out the best temp-wise too... For the boys at night we don't close their door, just pull it to halfway and the room warms up noticeably for sleeping. Interior doors are open downstairs during the day and the passive heat rising keeps the edge off things upstairs when we're at work/school. Pellet stove doesn't have as far to start from with these things going, and our electricity bill has not taken much of a hit at all!
Jeez I should be getting paid for this much smarm eh? A kickback at least maybe... 8-/
We just didn't have the budget to put in radiant floor heat into the basement slab as we dearly would have liked to (built our own place, in a year ago last fall) knowing that our bedrooms were going to be down there. These under rug mat things have made an enormous difference for us downstairs. We were using Cadet wall heaters, only on when we were in the rooms and set to between 55-58 degrees when not occupied and they were huge electricity suckers. The units we have were supposed to be fairly efficient etc. but the basement still never felt that warm unless they were cranked on high all the time. Even then the floor area still felt chilly. Now, I happily sit on the floor in my boys room and enjoy being downstairs again. I loved being down there before in the summer heat as it was 15-20 cooler than outside, and at least 10 degrees cooler than the upstairs:D Now we'll just unplug 'em when the weather warms up again. Don't even know they're there.
Sorry about the tome, but thought I'd add a different alternative to backbreaking amounts of experimental ductwork... Anybody else out there using these?
