Our finished basement gets cool in the winter. I purchased an oil filled portable heater (DeLonghi) to help supplement the furnace heat. It helps quite a bit when on, but the thing uses 1500W of power on high (other available settings are 700W and 900W). I have also read that leaving the furnace blower set to "on" all the time will help even out the temperature so that the basement will feel warmer. Given the choice of 1) setting the blower to "on" or 2) using a 1500W setting on the portable heater, which will have the least impact on my electric bill? I can't find a wattage rating on my furnace blower, but I'm pretty sure it's fairly average in size (installed for an 1800 sqft atrium ranch home). I realize there are other considerations such as wear and tear on the blower motor and overall comfort level between the two options, but I'm mainly interested in electricity usage. Also, how do I calculate the dollar impact on my monthly electric bill of running the 1500W heater for say 10 hours a day at some assumed electric rate? I think the rates are based on KWH, but I need to check a recent bill. Is it as simple as 10 Hours X 1.5KW per Hour X Rate? EDIT: I think I figured this out - I think it's about $30/month (1.5KW * 10 hrs per day * .065$/KWH * 30days). Now I just need to know how many watts a "typical" furnace blower uses...15amp * 120V = 1800W??? Any help or opinions would be appreciated. Thanks, Nuzy

This is going to be long, fair warning. In 10/2005, I bought a 1900 sq ft cape with a 2.5 ton goodman split system, heat pump. System passed inspection for purchase and I had an AHS warranty, so...May, 2006 Turn on AC, and it wont cool, constant hot and no air flow. AHS afilliated repair service comes out, diagnos' as a bad compressor, AHS replaces compressor at my cost $300, theirs $2200, parts and labor. Still living in an 80deg house. Had repair company out five more times and nothing is working right. I called AHS and said send someone who knows what they're doing, they send a different guy, He NO's what he's doing, says my air handler is shot, blower is sitting in water due to drain being installed wrong, and here's an $1800 estimate. He leaves and within the hour AHS calls leaving a nasty message stating that repair will not be covered due to faulty installation(even though I didn't install) and that system would not be covered until repaired to the second guys diagnosis, with 5 months left on a contract I didn't pay for, I told them to piss off. I didn't have $1800, and felt that their first techs screwed up more than they fixed. In July I went away and let my system set and drain, Didn't even run the fan, when I got home I inspected the drain and repaired it to function correctly, and showed a friend who is a maintenance man at an apartment complex what was going on, Fan worked well, coils just sweat alot. He has his boss come over and check freon, 7lbs low, top offf, same thing. Long story short after rewiring the fan to high speed and running it with side panel off and getting tons of air through the vents, my friend goes right to the back side of the coil which visibly appeared to have never had its sealing broken, and pulled off two inches of crud. Wow we had ac! Ran constantly though but kept the house cool, then winter came... no heat, just ac. Another associate of mine,(not the smart friend) puts in a Tstat(wrong one) reconnects the heat strips that the first techs dis-con'd, and I have electric heat, no heat pump, and no control over the unit except for throwing the breaker to turn it off/on. then on the coldest night of the year heat wont run off the breaker. Call another guy, tell him I know I need a new system what can I do to get it to last until spring when my smart friend will be around again, and can help me install a new sysytem, he charges me $70- to tell me I need a new system and he cant even tell me whats wrong until i replace t-stat with correct type, Heatpump w/aux. Now I am convinced there isn't an honest HVAC guy in the area, so I start researching, I don't know much about hvac but, I am an Injection Molding process engineer with a lot of experience with electric controls on machinery, I found my heat sequencer broken, so I rplaced it, the BTDR, run capacitor, and heat strips. I bought a Rite temp model 8010 t-stat, states it is for heat pumps with electric heat. Find idiot who installed t-stat pulled codes off wires. Research again, hook up my red--rh, orange--o, yellow--y, jumped to white as per schematic supplied with the t-stat, and white--w2, It ran and t-stat controlled the fan but still no heat pump, so despite the desperate urging of my wife I research more and thinking maybe the problem was in the wiring to t-stat all this time, and crossed my thinking at 1am and put blue to b, and brown to rc( thinking I was going common to common) and it doesn't work any more, meter and me go under the house and now getting 230v on one side of transformer and nothing on the other side. So i put in a new transformer today and had 24 volts ac on the low voltage, but still no function, when i checked the voltage at the thermostat got nothing, tried jumping green, and red to run fan( saw that here) and it wouldn't run. I have no 24 volt at the defrost board before installing new trans in the air handler, but that shouldn't stop the heat strips and fan should it? Is my t-stat toasted from the mis wire the other night? Please help me not become the hvac vigilante( my wifes statement after I turned the air blue over getting charged double at the local johnstone store for electrical parts because I am not lic'd) I just want to get this thing though the next two months. Thanks in advance, and hope you had a good laugh at my misery cuz thats what my co-workers do when I go into this hvac rant.