does a window AC unit use more juice than an electric heater unit?

i know # about this stuff and dont really know who to ask.

my electric bill through the winter has been about $300. i have an all electric place and we had a bad winter so the heat was on all day/night for months. think central air but heat. i have a thermostat on the wall and vents in every room and the heat pumps through it all. o about 300 bones with all the other # running.

i was on the fence about running a window AC unit this summer because i wanted to try and reduce my electric bill but my house is already stupid hot. so i just put a 5000 BTU AC window unit in and have it on now. i know that wont work for the entire house(about 1k sq ft) but i have another 5,000 BTU one coming my way in a few weeks.

these are not new units so i dont think they are the up to date energy efficient #.

i have absolutely o idea how to figure out how much this is going to cost vs the heat.

can anyone that knows about this kind of # give me an opinion and maybe a general idea?

does 1 of these units running the same amount of time as the heater use the same amount of juice/cost as much?
what if i have 2 running the same amount of time?

i would like to not have $300 bills all summer but we need to have air man.

last year my landlord said he was selling the house we were renting after 4 years so we had to put together a move in 2 months time cause my daughter was about to start kindergarten and we needed to settle.

so i got the brilliant idea of hey, lets move into this #ing trailer for a year because we will be able to save a little cash.
well this dumb ass trailer is costing me more money because the crazy electric bill.
i screwed myself. i just need to get to next March then we are out.

so i guess bottom line question to all of you with more experience than me is will 1/2 of these units cost the same amount, more or less per month than the heater.

for the record i had the Ohio energy commission investigate my electric bill and usage because i just did not think it was correct but they said it was.

thanks

a reply to: TinySickTears

I would imagine it's down to the Wattage used for each coupled with the amount of time on. If you know the wattage on each appliance you can figure it out.

originally posted by: TheMadTitan
a reply to: TinySickTears

I would imagine it's down to the Wattage used for each coupled with the amount of time on. If you know the wattage on each appliance you can figure it out.

yeah i dont know #.

the heater unit is buried in this little cubby type nook and all i can get to is the filter. the AC is a few years old and dont say # that i can see.

thats why i am just looking for general type answers.
i know people wont be able t tell me exactly but people with experience might have an idea.

lets start with this.

does it take more juice to make # hot or to make # cold?

a reply to: TinySickTears

A friend of mine has this little gizmo he plugs into a wall socket with a digital readout that tells him how much electricity he's using and how much it's costing roughly. It's similar to this www.amazon.com...

originally posted by: TheMadTitan
a reply to: TinySickTears

A friend of mine has this little gizmo he plugs into a wall socket with a digital readout that tells him how much electricity he's using and how much it's costing roughly. It's similar to this www.amazon.com...

thats interesting.
so when all my # is running i can plug that into an outlet and it will tell me whats what?


edit

i see how it works. that thing is slick man.
thanks.

might have to get it

removed because I think you should figure it out yourself.

originally posted by: TinySickTears
so when all my # is running i can plug that into an outlet and it will tell me whats what?

No, it will tell you what the appliance draws that is plugged into this thing, not for the whole house.

Here's an estimate here:

Central Air Conditioner – 3500 Watts
Central A/C Fan Only – Compressor Off – 750 Watts
Largest Window Units – 1440 Watts
Medium Window Unit – 900 Watts
Smallest Window Unit – 500 Watts

www.senicaair.com...

All of those units require an electric motor to perpetually compress coolant gas into liquid (creating heat, which is removed by a heatsink and fan) and then allowing that liquid to heat back into gas where it absorbs more heat from the inside air. Think of those systems like the water cooling for a high-end gaming PC.

A three bar electric fire is 3000 watts or 3 Kilowatts. It's costing you more to cool your place than heat it. You might want to get solar panels at the same time as they would capture and store enough power during a sunny day to drive those air conditioning units.

a reply to: TinySickTears

How old are these AC units?
5 years old?....10 years old?
Look on the plate to see if you can see what the SEER rating is.
Say the SEER rating is 10....5000 BTU divided by 10 = 500 Watts per hour.
500 Watts per hour divided by 1000 gives you the kilowatt hours.....which would be .5 kWh
Say the electric company charges 25 cents an hour for usage.
.5 X .25 = .125.....it would cost 12 1/2 cents an hour to run it.
The newer the unit, the higher the SEER rating will be.
If you ran it 24 hours a day, it would cost you about $90 for the month.

originally posted by: RazorV66
a reply to: TinySickTears

How old are these AC units?
5 years old?....10 years old?
Look on the plate to see if you can see what the SEER rating is.
Say the SEER rating is 10....5000 BTU divided by 10 = 500 Watts per hour.
500 Watts per hour divided by 1000 gives you the kilowatt hours.....which would be .5 kWh
Say the electric company charges 25 cents an hour for usage.
.5 X .25 = .125.....it would cost 12 1/2 cents an hour to run it.
The newer the unit, the higher the SEER rating will be.
If you ran it 24 hours a day, it would cost you about $90 for the month.

thanks man. i cant see # inside cause most of the unit is hanging out the window. i will check that tomorrow.
i would say no older than 10 years. its a GE. pretty decent, newish looking digital readout on it.
i will check that info tomorrow.

i can live with 90 bones a month

originally posted by: TinySickTears

originally posted by: RazorV66
a reply to: TinySickTears

How old are these AC units?
5 years old?....10 years old?
Look on the plate to see if you can see what the SEER rating is.
Say the SEER rating is 10....5000 BTU divided by 10 = 500 Watts per hour.
500 Watts per hour divided by 1000 gives you the kilowatt hours.....which would be .5 kWh
Say the electric company charges 25 cents an hour for usage.
.5 X .25 = .125.....it would cost 12 1/2 cents an hour to run it.
The newer the unit, the higher the SEER rating will be.
If you ran it 24 hours a day, it would cost you about $90 for the month.

thanks man. i cant see # inside cause most of the unit is hanging out the window. i will check that tomorrow.
i would say no older than 10 years. its a GE. pretty decent, newish looking digital readout on it.
i will check that info tomorrow.

i can live with 90 bones a month

Obviously there are possible variables, just keep that in mind.
A buddy of mine lived in an older trailer some years ago that had basically no insulation at all.
That would impact things too.

en.m.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: RazorV66

i know i can not get an exact answer.
just looking for a ballpark and peoples opinions.

i appreciate it

a reply to: TinySickTears

The window units of today are fairly efficient.

But it's important that you get a unit that will efficiently cool the area you want. Otherwise the AC will not cycle off when the room is cool.

A 10 btu AC will not cool down a room that's 20 x 20 with windows and doors to the outside.

Here's a room size estimate of how many BTU you will need. If you have big windows I'd go 2 sizes bigger.



I had a 28K btu ac in my house. And it cooled down my living room and kitchen awesomely. My AC bill was around 200 bucks a month.

There are so many factors.
Because you asked for a generalization , I am saying A/C
Why ?
I have lived in my home for 15 years . The house was being built when I put a contract on it . The builders spared no expense with the heating or air conditioning units
Both are connected to the same two thermostats . One for upstairs and one for downstairs (yes , they can be set to work independently of each other)
Before I say this , I live in Georgia .
My A/C bill has always been more than the heating bill .
Perhaps that helps. Perhaps not.

a reply to: TinySickTears

Do you have natural gas for heat?

I imagine it’s expensive, if older, the older anything electrical rack up the bills.

I can log in to my account online and see what times of day I’m using more and the wattage etc. Perhaps you also have this feature?

One day I looked at it & saw on one day it had really spiked. I had to think of why that particular day? What the hell was I running? It was an older model cheap crock pot cooking a roast. Used it for a few hours. I got rid of it and managed to get a better one for free with some points. I knew that thing was a # crock pot, the temp would fluctuate all the time (a sure sign there’s a faulty element in it).

So I see my usage is going up once I get up, run a coffee maker, laundry, vacuuming etc, but that frickin crock pot outdid all these things. I was doing a challenge to cut down my usage. If I cut down 10% from the previous year I was awarded $75. This is why I started looking up my usage online. You can see by times of day and really figure out what is causing spikes.

Hopefully you can look it up online also.

a reply to: grey580

it is definitely not big enough to cool the whole place. i have another coming but both will not be enough to cool the whole place but theyre free.
all i am looking for is a little relief during the day.
we will have to turn it off manually once we feel a cool down.

best i can do right now

originally posted by: RazorV66
a reply to: TinySickTears

How old are these AC units?
5 years old?....10 years old?
Look on the plate to see if you can see what the SEER rating is.
Say the SEER rating is 10....5000 BTU divided by 10 = 500 Watts per hour.
500 Watts per hour divided by 1000 gives you the kilowatt hours.....which would be .5 kWh
Say the electric company charges 25 cents an hour for usage.
.5 X .25 = .125.....it would cost 12 1/2 cents an hour to run it.
The newer the unit, the higher the SEER rating will be.
If you ran it 24 hours a day, it would cost you about $90 for the month.

If you ran it 24 hours a day, it would cost a lot more than $90 a month, the SEER would no longer be 10. Your calculation for SEER is a rough guide, but there is more goes into that calculation than just BTU/SEER.

I have the pleasure of living up in MI, where I can leave windows open with a box fan in them & keep the house in the low/mid 70's easy in the summer. Downstairs.

The bedrooms upstairs are a different story, it can consistently be at least 10 degrees hotter upstairs than the temp outside. So a 90+ degree heatwave day in August is brutal in the bedrooms.

We've been considering a portable AC tower unit for each bedroom for at least at night to sleep comfortably, basically looks like a heater tower, but is A/C. I'm just not sure how worth it it'd be, portables can jack electric bills way up quick if you're not mindful. I have several portable radiator-style oil heaters, and they're damn effective when they get heated up, but they eat kilowatts for lunch, man. I imagine a portable A/C is no better, probably worse.

Edit: Maybe your best budget-friendly bet would be a swamp cooler? They're evaporative coolers, the air temp is cooled through water evaporation, and you can build them from stuff like box fans. I might give it a shot this year, retrofitting a box fan into an evaporative would be substantially more affordable than a portable A/C or window A/C.

a reply to: Nyiah

Those tower units do the trick for us as well. Along with keeping the bedrooms dark during the day.