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10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

Posted by echo2400 (My Page) on
Wed, Nov 18, 09 at 22:39

Will 10 100 watt bulbs put out the same amount of heat as a 1000 watt space heater?


Follow-Up Postings:

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RE: 10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

ohms law
watts are watts and the electric company charges by kilowatts
so that 1000 watts by lightbulbs or a 1000 watt heater probably costs 13 cents an hour depending how much your utility company charges per kilowatt plus tax.


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RE: 10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

Added benefit: You make light while heating the house.


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RE: 10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

No no. You're paying for 1000 watts energy consumption but you get less heat from lightbulbs because alot of the energy is used to produce light (not heat). Don't confuse energy used with heat produced. Good discussion though.


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RE: 10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

Not much of the energy used by incandescent lamps makes light. 94% to 96% of the energy consumed by such lamps is heat. So 4% to 6 % is light. Lamp life is short due to the heat.


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RE: 10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

What about the Guinness book of records where a closet light has been burning since the teens? :)

They don't last long because the filaments are so thin. Plus, they'd never sell any new ones. :)


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RE: 10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

To answer the original question:

Yes.

All of the energy, including the small amount that becomes light, turns into heat.


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RE: 10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

I have a new energy star ranch with zoned heating to the finished but unused basement. And I have ceiling fans running in the rooms that I spend the most time in. And I would enjoy having extra lights on in the house. I'm going to use the celing fans with the 10' ceilings any time i'm in the room, so here comes the questions.
Solar Comfort and Edenpure use bulbs to heat. That's what got me started on this. The Solar Comfort use the same heat bulbs as farmers use for the animals so they are cheep and easy accessible. And the Edenpure uses bulbs.
If I am running a space heater with a ceiling fan running in the room 24-7, how does the heater fan figure in? wouldn't I get the same heat out put without the heater fan? And running that fan would actually waste electricity?
What good does a copper heat exchanger accomplish in space heaters?
What about the oil filled heater? They may be safer and hold heat longer but it takes longer to heat up so no real heat gain right? Other than what is gained by using no fan.
What about halogen Bulbs compared to incandescent?
What about Quartz tubes?
I have a finished basement with 36 can lights with 60 watts incandescent flood bulbs. When not using the basement and needing very little heat down there. If I used the can lights to add some heat in basement, with most of the heat radiating to the upstairs and help keep the hardwood floors warmer.
I used to use cf's in the summer and incandescent in winter. I have been using LED bulbs were I can get by without high wattage bulbs. I'm getting about 40 watts for 1.5 watts used. ($5-$10 at Walmart and Costco.) I'm now thanking of using led's in the can lights year around because incandescent heat at ceiling would loose more heat. Then use Incandescent in the winter in lamps and chandeliers and be liberal about leaving them on when needing heat. What do you think?


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RE: 10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

Only a simple observation. Fluorescent and LED lights put out wattage, but I'm not sure if that is pure heat.

Incandescent, oil filled heaters, and any device that uses resistance wire produce 100% heat. No chimney flue losses are involved. Heat is heat. It produces so much per Kilowatt hour.

Electric, with no chimney, is 100% efficient.

When you get into the meaning of 100 watts of electric heat and 100 watts of light, I defer to others.


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RE: 10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

There are a lot of confusing questions... let me try to clarify some things:

1. All energy becomes heat. All of it.
So, the electrical energy going into a light, a fan, a stereo, etc. all becomes heat. Any electrical device is 100% efficient (close enough) at producing heat. As the previous post said, a device that has a flue will not be 100% efficient at producing heat that goes in your house... because some of it goes out the flue.

2. The electrical energy that is actually consumed by an electrical device, measured in watt hours, is the amount of heat it produces. period. The only exception to this is a heat pump. So, a 1500 watt Edenpure heater produces exactly as much heat as a 1500 watt hair dryer or 1500 watt vacuum cleaner or 15 100 watt light bulbs. The EdenPure and Solar Comfort heaters have a higher coefficient of BS and are made of special wallet lightening materials... but other than that, they produce the same number of BTU's per watt hour of electricity as my Kitchen Aid mixer.

3. Believe it or not, visual light output isn't measured in Watts as we commonly think of it (it is a measure of radiant flux). We use the amount of light an incandescent bulb produces as a common reference point, but it's a really poor reference.
So, for example, we say that a 26 watt florescent bulb produces the same light output as a 100 watt bulb... but the amount of light a 100 watt incandescent bulb produces varies a great deal. One of the factors is the voltage applied to the bulb and the voltage at which the wattage rating was given.

On the other hand, a 26 watt fluorescent bulb produces 26 watt hours of heat while a 100 watt bulb produces 100 watt hours of heat. If it's light that you are after and not heat, you want the thing that produces the most light for the least amount of electricity. A kilowatt hour (1000 watts for an hour) is equal to 3413 btu's.

BTW: large office buildings often don't need heat in the core of the building because of all the heat from the lights, computers, etc.

The actual measurement of light is very complicated - there are parts of the light spectrum that we can't see (infrared and ultraviolet, for example) The common measure you will likely see in comparing light output is lumens. That is a more apples-to-apples measure of light output for average people if you don't use the inexact "incandescent equivalent".

Given that information, can I help you narrow down your questions a little?


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RE: 10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

Light bulbs do not produce watts, they consume watts.

The wattage can be converted to btu's, which is a measure of heat.

The light emitted by a light bulb is measured in lumens.


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RE: 10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

That is true, but electric baseboard units are specked by watts. So, a 1000 watt baseboard unit is the same as a 1000 watt bulb in BTU value.


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RE: 10 100 watt bulb verses 1000 watt heater?

The difference is how efficient that baseboard heater is in converting the heat energy into warm air versus a bare light bulb.


 
 

 

 


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