Dishwashing & Heat

[rhanlav]

Life's been interesting lately. My dishwasher wasn't working very well, and last week, it overflowed and made a huge mess on the kitchen floor. Last night, the repair guy came out from my Home Appliance Insurance place to fix it. It was a guy from Sears who's contracted out by the insurance, but he got it working, showed me a few things, told me

Comments

[skunktaur]

Also note that if you have something like a radiator setup, it's not on all the time.

It will heat your house up until its thermostat reaches the correct temperature and shut off until it measures a threshhold temperature under what you've set it to be. Then turns back on and re-heats to the settings you want.
That means that on a whole your temperature will not be 70 spot on, but more 65-75.

If you're worried, however, have it checked out while you still have insurances/warranties or the likes running? :)

[simtra]

If you have something that say "Emergency" heat you have a heat pump which do not work very well when the temps get below freezing as all they can do is raise or lower the temperature about 30 - 40 degrees. So if it is 20 outside, it might be able to put out 60 degree air. Think of an heat pump as an AC that runs backwards, It is pulling what little heat there is outside and bringing it in. If you want some fun, put a temp gauge under the fan and you'll see the air is colder then the outside air.

If you turn the EMGR heat on it will feel warm but kill your power bills. If it is a bit cold for you, you might want to just get an small electric heater for your room at night and just shut the door. Or what I do, I have an electric throw that keeps me warm and then I just bundle up when I get out of bed till I get the fire going. :D

Also, I don't know if you sleep your PC, keep it on and running something (Like seti at home) and it will put out about 250 WATTS of heat like a small heater.

[rhanlav]

Yeah, I have an EmHeat option, so yeah, it's a Heat Pump. And yeah, I don't leave my PC on, mostly because it has running lights and so I tend to rather leave it off rather than on.

[carlhh]

If I remember my thermodynamics class from college correctly, heat pumps are not good at heating or cooling a house.

What they are very good for is keeping an already cool house cool or an already warm house warm very economically. It'll take a heat pump forever to make a hot house cool or a cold house warm.