Brisbane may be well know for its balmy evenings and soaring humidity, but during winter the nights can become much colder than expected. Especially if you live on the Western outskirts in the likes of Ipswich.

Nevermind the impending cold fronts, Queensland’s electricity prices alone are enough to send a shiver down your spine. Currently you’re accustomed to paying almost $335 a year before even turning on a switch, due to the 91.75cents/day service to property fee.

With such costs to the home being unavoidable, it’s more important that ever to take particular care with what power you actually consume around the house. Although reduced electricity prices have been promised in the near future, Queenslanders are still tolerating an average standard tariff fee of 27.92cents/kWh.

The Challenge Of Heating The Home

With winter and the discomfort of cold nights comes a change in household behaviours that lead to dramatic changes in energy consumption. The key point being that devices made to generate heat are some of the largest energy consumers to ever take pride of place in the home.

As a general rule, the back of your hand can be one of the most effective ways to test the energy efficiency of devices around the home. For example, chest freezers and refrigerators are quite substantial consumers of energy in the home. If you were to hold the back of your hand to the side or rear surface of either appliance, you’d notice a reasonable amount of heat. Now compare this test to your ultra thin LED flatscreen TV – it will feel comparably cool.

Size Doesn’t Necessarily Matter When It Comes To Home Heating
Unfortunately, it’s natural instinct to consider size as an important factor when it comes to the energy being consumed by a home appliance. While in many cases, the larger a device the more energy it consumes, the same is not usually the case when it comes to the cheapest ways to heat the home.

Many Queenslanders, especially in the colder parts of Greater Brisbane, make the mistake of heading down to their local store and grabbing a little electric fan heater to place on the floor. Little do they know that considering the kW rating and duty cycle of an appliance is of the utmost importance.

To put this mistake into perspective, a seemingly harmless low profile fan heater is comparably as power hungry as a kettle. With an average power rating between 2000 and 2400 Watts, this heater alone could cost up to a whopping 67cents/hour! Consider that using such an appliance for 3 hours a night in front of the TV during winter, could cost in excess of $180, not to mention everything else running in your home!

Things To Consider When Searching For The Cheapest Ways To Heat The Home

Of course, depending on your circumstances you may be suited to different methods for heating the home and it’s important to consider your individual needs. Needless to say there are endless options on the market leaving you with plenty of choice when it comes to home heating.

Different Ways To Heat The Home

Portable heaters:

• Oil-filled column or fan heaters.
• Bar radiator or strip heaters.

Space heaters:

• Off-peak heat bank.
• Day rate fan heater.

Central heating:

• In slab underfloor heating.
• Radiant ceiling heating.

The options are almost overwhelming and with one particular flaw when you consider the Queensland climate – you’d be lucky to get value for money. As a Queenslander it would be hard to justify paying for a system or appliance dedicated solely to heating, when in reality you’re only likely to use it for less than a quarter of the year.

Already the options for home heating are somewhat impractical, of course if you were living in the southern states you’d have a much different agenda. Worst of all, we are yet to consider the costs of running a designated heating solution.

Luckily, there is a much more practical solution for Queenslanders and best of all you’ll get year round use out of it.

The Cheapest Way To Heat Your Home In Queensland

I bet you’re well aware that an air-conditioner is almost a necessity when it comes to living comfortably in Brisbane or Ipswich and the surrounding areas. With split-system air-conditioners being one of the most effective means of cooling the home in summer, you’ll be humbled to know that they are also the preferred choice for heating your home in the winter months.
A good quality, energy-efficient Reverse Cycle Split System Air Conditioner is in fact the cheapest way to heat your home and as an added bonus it’s your best cooling option come summer time.

On average, due to inverter technology, well tuned duty cycles and controlled thermostats, reverse cycle split systems are consume only about one-third the power of an electric fan heater that’s only really effective for keeping your feet warm.

Let’s consider the above mentioned floor heater, costing around $180 to run across the span of winter. An adequately sized reverse cycle split system air conditioner would do a much better job of heating a given area and would only cost you around $60 in running costs for winter.

Discuss The Cheapest Ways To Heat Your Home Today

So this winter, consider not only what is the cheapest way to heat the home, but think about meeting year round seasonal requirements with one appliance. Contact Fixzit Trade Services today and discuss with us your needs for keeping warm and cozy this winter.

Not only are we confident in providing a cost effective solution for heating your home this winter, we have a range of excellent cash-back offers from our trusted suppliers:

Mitsubishi: $100 – $400 Cashback.
Fujitsu: $150 – $400 Cashback.
Panasonic: $200 Cashback.
Kelvinator: $100 – $200 Cashback.

With over 30 years experience, Fixzit are Brisbane’s trusted trade services provider. Our expertise spans from Air Conditioning, Electrical, Plumbing, Carpentry, Solar and everything in between.