My husband and I live in a great attic apartment; we have cool architectural details and windows, but we pay for that with ridiculous gas heating costs. Our utility costs would nearly double come November; anticipating that, we looked for alternative heating sources that would conserve energy.

Our apartment isn't insulated well, and due to the whole attic business we have trouble keeping heat from going through the roof. We researched a couple of options-- radiant heat, ceramic heaters, etc. We didn't want natural gas as we didn't want to install anything, so we went with electric. A friend of...