Whether your heat isn’t working or you’re really trying to save on your power/gas bill, there are right ways and wrong ways to heat your home. Some methods are clearly unsafe, while others are simply inefficient and unhelpful.
We get it…when your heat goes out on a cold day and you’re patiently waiting for Autumn Air to arrive for your furnace repair at your home in Gadsden, AL, you may feel tempted to raise the temperature any way you can. But please, please be careful. Some alternative heating options can potentially turn a frustrating situation into something truly dangerous.
Think twice before you pursue any of the following risky (and/or ineffective) options for heating your home:
Turning on the Oven
An oven’s intended purpose is to heat/bake food. When turned on for baking purposes, they tend to add a little bit of warmth to the kitchen. But you might be tempted to try using your oven to heat your home, which is a particularly dangerous and bad idea. Here’s why:
- Injury and Fire Risks
Leaving the oven door open or your stovetop burners on poses a serious burn risk.
- Carbon monoxide Risk
If you have a gas oven and don’t use it properly, you could suffer carbon monoxide poisoning, which can even be deadly.
- Only provides limited effects
You may feel toasty standing right next to the oven may provide a little bit of warmth, but it’s going to stay right there since there’s no mechanism to get the hot air circulating around.
Lighting Candles
Candles can add a certain ambiance and aroma to your space, but you shouldn’t rely on candles to heat it up. For starters, candles aren’t going to hold a candle to the heat your furnace provides…see what we did there (please laugh). They just don’t put off enough heat to make a difference. And as you can imagine, candles also pose a high fire risk, even when used correctly (accidents happen). Candles can tip over or get blown by a draft, and long fabrics and other flammable materials that get near it could catch on fire. If the power is out along with your heat, we understand using them as a light source if necessary, but don’t expect them to provide warmth.
Running the Shower
When your heat isn’t working at all or at least working well, but you have no problem running your water very hot, it might lead you to consider running your shower at the hottest setting while leaving your bathroom door open, with the goal of having the hot bathroom air circulate through the house. Sadly, it doesn’t really work that well…unless you just sit in your bathroom the whole time, in which case you might as well be in the shower getting clean too. Running your shower on the hottest setting with the bathroom door open will only heat up your bathroom and probably the area just outside your bathroom. Because the source of the heat is limited to the water coming from the shower faucet, this option won’t adequately heat the rest of your home.
Plus, extended water use like this can leave mildew stains on the walls or grow into a mold problem due to all the unwanted moisture. Not to mention, it wastes a lot of water. Running a shower for a long time while not using it isn’t environmentally friendly, and it could even unnecessarily add to your water bill. It’s not realistic to keep your shower running day and night, and it’s unlikely that your hot water could even last that long. Once you turn off the shower, your bathroom will return to its prior cold state in a matter of minutes.
Don’t get us wrong, there’s risk involved in using a space heater or making a fire too. But if those are used correctly, they can effectively heat parts of your home until the furnace is repaired. Furnace repair is one of the things that Autumn Air specializes in in Gadsden, AL. If your heat goes out this winter, we hope you already know to contact us first so that we can get to your house and get the problem fixed as soon as possible. And while you’re waiting for us to arrive (which shouldn’t be too long), please think responsibly about how to heat your home.