Cheap Comfort

As a man born and raised in Minnesota, I am supposed to embrace the cold. When I was in college in Wisconsin, one of my roomates liked sleeping with the windows open--during the winter. Somehow that was construed as manly rather than idiodic. Today, I prove that I am unworthy of such a rugged heritage because I admit...I have a heated blanket. And I love it.

Actually, the heated blanket has a purpose beyond compromising my masculinity. One purpose of the heated blanket was to serve as a gift for my wife, who loves her heated throw. (Take note, guys: a $30 heated throw makes a fantastic gift for your wife or girlfriend.) But another purpose was to save money. We live in a house without zoned climate control. If I want it to be, say, 68 degrees in our bedroom at night, I have to either heat the entire house to 68 degrees (which is a waste of money), or I have to get creative.

One option is to use a space heater. This is a perfectly fine option if it works for you, but we found that it wasn't working as well as we had hoped. So I decided to try a heated blanket, which--like the space heater--should theoretically let me turn the thermostat way down without compromising our comfort. We bought a Sunbeam dual-control unit, so we can each select the temperature we like. It costs $70 at WalMart.

We love the heated blanket; it does the job very well. It's a basic unit though, so it doesn't have automatic shut-off. No problem; I purchased a $5 outlet timer to cut the power at 7:15 am so we don't have to bother turning off the blanket in the morning.

But does it save money? Sunbeam claims that you can "Save up to 10% a year on your heating bills by turning on your Sunbeam Heated Blanket and setting your thermostat back by 10%-15% while sleeping." (That quote is from WalMart.com.) Well, I used my Kill-a-Watt unit (I'll probably dedicate another post to this gadget) to gauge the electricity usage last night, and 9 hours of continuous use at the lowest setting (on both sides of the blanket) cost 0.44 KWH, which equates to 4 cents at my current electricity rate. I suspect that dropping my thermostat level even 1 degree for the evening probably saves more than 4 cents in energy costs. I don't know how long it will take to pay for itself, but given the comfort level and the low operating cost, we're considering this a great investment.