Backup Paraffin Heaters

The second backup heating system for the bedrooms is small portable paraffin heaters. These heaters use paraffin liquid fuel, also commonly known as kerosene, which is distilled from petroleum. I do not like using these and try to keep my use of them to a minimum. Besides the fact that they use a highly finite, unsustainable, non-local resource, their combustion, while relatively clean due to the paraffin heaters' burning technology, still ends up worsening interior air quality. My hope is that future house improvements, such as the addition of a sunroom, increased insulation levels, the incorporation of an active solar space heating sytem, and other smaller odds and ends, will reduce my need for these paraffin heaters to the point that they become nonessential. If these improvements fail to achieve this, then I will modify the active solar heating system and make it into a hybrid solar-biomass heating system.

For the time being, since I have to use these heaters for five to six weeks throughout the winter, I try to use them as responsibly as I can think of. This means using them efficiently and seldom. In practice this means several things. First, I have two types of paraffin heaters. One is manual and must be turned on by hand when one gets cold. The other is electric and turns itself on based on programmed parameters. The electric one is more efficient since it turns itself on and off at preset temperatures and times. This automatically ensures a certain temperature within a room without someone needing to constantly check the temperatures which would lead to inefficiencies since the heater would not be turned off as often as it should be; furthermore, it's time feature allows the heater to turn itself off after one has fallen asleep in a warm bed, allowing the temperature to drop, and then turn itself back on just before one wakes, to bring the room temperature back up. I use this electrical heater in the master bedroom-bathroom since this room is used every day and therefore leads to greater convenience and energy savings. The manual one is used in the far guest bedroom and is turned on only when in use. Another thing I do to keep paraffin consumption down is to keep the room temperatures at around 18 degrees Celcius when the rooms are occupied. And I turn the master bedroom-bathroom heater off when I am out of the house or asleep.

The paraffin liquid itself comes in 20 liter plastic bottles. Luckily, since petroleum prices have been increasing so have prices of these bottles. While this makes it more expensive for me to purchase them, it also gives me an incentive to use less and to make the improvements to my house sooner. However, since I use only five or six bottles a winter, the recent price increases of a few euros per bottle mean a total price increase of less than 25 euros, which is not a very powerful incentive. I suspect that EU governments have taken measures to ensure that fossil-fuel price increases are not fully reflected in heating fuel prices, either by putting price limits or by decreasing fuel taxes. I disagree with both of these. While I understand the need for everyone to have affordable heating, distorting prices in such a way simply encourages individuals to do the wrong thing - to continue blindly using fossil-fuels without trying to break this detrimental addiction.