how do you heat your home

[killian]

I'm looking to buy my 1st home and I'm just wondering what I should look for.

The house I'm currently looking at has electric heat and I have heard heating with electric is expensive.
The house has natural gas plumbed in to the laundry room and the current owner has a gas heater heating the finished basement to save money.
Any one running something like this http://compare.ebay.com/like/300348377551?ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes?

 

[eriktlupus]

boiler and radiators or forced hot air?


i can't give a comparison but mine costs around 800/yr for heating/hot water on a forced air system @1000sq. ft.

 

[mullenite]

This apartment is electric, previous was gas. The gas heated faster but with our local gas prices gas was more expensive than the electric. It's probably going to depend on your area and what you are being charged for gas.

 

[MikeinAK]

We have a monitor in our house. Small, quiet, and efficient. We use oil, but they make them for gas.

http://www.monitorproducts.com/products/roomheaters/gas/gf3800

 

[ChshreCat]

+1 on that. It's all depending on where you're at and what prices are as to what is the cheapest.

 

[The Pol]

NG heat.

3000 sq foot. January and February bills are the highest at $130/mo

April - November gas runs about $25/mo for the water heater only.

 

[weirdboy]

We have no heat and no AC in our apartment.

 

[Marsdude]

I live in a 5,000 sq. ft. log home that I built myself from felling the trees to doing all the plumbing wiring etc. (with the help of some friends). I did a lot of research on heating and went with in-floor hydronic heating. A high efficiency 100 gal. water heater provides all the heat for the house along with our hot water.

I highly recommend this type of system. Very efficient and having the heat come from the floor is wonderful. It seems like you are looking for a prebuilt house so that makes it hard to find one with this type of heating but if you decide to build I would go with the in-floor heat.

 

[friarjohn]

i have a mobile home thats all electrc, my highest electric bill in three years has been 300 dollars.

 

[david_42]

Wood with a heat-pump. Had resistive electric and that was ~$220/month for Dec-Feb. Cut that to $60 with the heat-pump. This was my first year for wood heating. Spent about $500 on a chainsaw, flue liner and miscellaneous. Didn't have to turn on the heat-pump for several months, but I ran out of dry wood and it's back on.

I also have a propane 10K BTU ventless heater in the brewery. Don't use it much. Also, a 300KBTU garage heater. Used that once in four years.

When I built the new garage, I installed a propane water heater and clothes dryer. I'd estimate the cost of running them is double what the electric ones cost. Propane took a major jump shortly after the switch.

Where you are, natural gas would be worth the switch.

 

[scratchypants]

Closed loop geothermal with electric backup and wood heat for warm and cozy weekends.

 

[springer]

wood -coal stove and oil forced hot air. Right now I am just using the oil as I get it a few cents above the rack price, my daughter works for an oil company and its one of the perks.

 

[GVH_Dan]

Killian,

The "best" form of heat all depends on what you are looking for. Cheapest 1st cost? cheapest operating cost? Best air quality? Best comfort? Best environmental stewardship?

Since you mention that you are a 1st time home buyer, I'm going to guess that you aren't looking for a system that is too expensive. Geothermal heat pumps hooked up to hydronic (radiant) floor systems are AWESOME, but not in the price range for most people.

Electric resistance is the cheapest 1st cost, but you generally pay for it month-by-month. Some will babble that it is 100% efficient, which it is but its much more expensive per btu than natural gas in most places run through a fairly efficient furnace.

To give you an idea, let's assume your electricity is $0.10/kWh and your gas is $1.00/therm. Let's also assume a 90% efficient furnace.

Electric: $0.10/kwh x 1 kwh/3412 Btu x 100,000btu/therm= $2.93/therm of heat in the house​

Gas: $1.00/therm x .90 = $0.90/therm of heat in the house​

Forced air furnaces are generally 80 to 97% efficient with natural gas or propane and 80 to 85% with fuel oil. Boilers are more in the 81% range during the harsh winter season but can get better if they have outdoor air temperature reset.

Heat pumps are basically air conditioners that can run backwards. They pull the heat from outside and shove it into your house. They are about 3 to 5 times more efficient than electric resistance so that brings them on par with natural gas furnaces.

Where you live, heat pumps may be possible. That's not the case in WI. We are just too cold most of the year. When the temperature drops below about 20F, it is too cold for the heatpump to work efficiently.

My best advice is before you make an offer, call some local HVAC firms and describe what is in the house, ask what they would recommend and ask for a price range (not a quote, rather a suggestion) of what it would cost to upgrade. Use that in you negotiations. You could also hire a home inspector, which you will want to do anyway, and ask them the same questions.

Final comment, that ebay link you showed was for a liquid propane vent free unit. Be careful with installing vent-free. They are not legal in all municipalities because they are putting all the combustion products into the space. At the very least, make sure you have a CO meter running in the space.

 

[HairyDogBrewing]

To compare one form of heating system to another:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/experts/heatcalc.xls

Plug in the current price of the fuel and the efficiency of the appliance.
Doesn't account for up front costs of the equipment.

 

[arch1tect]

I have NG but pay $130.00 a month x12 as a budget plan. This also covers our stove, hot water, and soon to be mini-brewery.

 

[OMJ]

I have steam radiators and we just switched from a really old oil furnace to a natural gas one. Based off our first bill it is going to save us around $350 a month during the winter. our house is 1400 sq ft

 

[buffalobrewer]

I know a lot of people in Arcade NY that have electric heat due to the municipal power rates they get (under .04/kwh if I remember correctly). I have forced air gas.

 

[jpc]

I don't heat my home. I live in a townhouse, and in four years there, I have yet to turn on the heat (except to make sure that it worked when I bought the place). Keeps a nice 65 or so all 'winter' long.

 

[david_42]

Another thing to check is the attic insulation. If it is less than R30, that's a simple upgrade and you'll probably be able to get a rebate or tax right-off.

 

[Skins_Brew]

NG forced air. My bill is insane, It was $320 last month. 2100 sq ft house. I am going to put in a gas log soon. My dad says they are more efficient then a furnace.

 

[jkarp]

NG forced air. My bill is insane, It was $320 last month. 2100 sq ft house. I am going to put in a gas log soon. My dad says they are more efficient then a furnace.

Bargain compared to Propane. $600 - $700 every 45 days in the Winter. 2100 sq ft.

 

[Mista_Sparkle]

how much do you want to spend and how long do you plan on living there?

Natural gas is usually about 1/3rd the cost of electric if you ahve an average furnace, better ones work quite a bit better. Electric heat pumps are great if it doesnt get too cold, you could use a heat pump in conjunction with geothermal heat to get great "efficiencies" compared to gas or electric resistance, however there is a large upfront cost for a geothermal type system, much easier to add to the cost of a new house.

If its about saving money, you are probably going to need to stay there quite a while to absorb the sunk costs of a new system

 

[pjj2ba]

I don't heat my home. I live in a townhouse, and in four years there, I have yet to turn on the heat (except to make sure that it worked when I bought the place). Keeps a nice 65 or so all 'winter' long.

Same for us the 3 yrs we lived in Sunnyvale. Lived on the second floor of a 2-story apt. building. Our downstairs neighbors were from Texas. We had toasty floors in the winter! Never used the AC either.

We heat our home in Central PA with coal and wood pellets. The pellet stove is in the basement. The former owner used it as a shop heater. I put in ducts to the two rooms above it. We use it only about two months (mid-Fall, and then early-Spring. The coal stove provides heat the rest of the time. It is a free-standing fireplace insert. This is plenty of heat for our 1700 sq ft. home. I buy a ton of wood pellets and 1.5 tons of coal. Runs me about $600 for the season. Our coal stove is a bit old and is messy. They have new ones now that are more efficient, easier to operate, and less messy.

 

[Boar Beer]

Wood
I even heat the hot water that we start brewing with wood for my hot water which comes in at 120 ish

This pile is 13.5 cords and is about what we use in a year

 

[rokipynes]

We heat 1500 sq ft with a Thelin pellet stove as primary. We have a fireplace for when it gets really cold and also have kero fired forced hot air as back up.

Boar Beer - I assume those boar and Elk came from C Park. If you live in the close we are almost neighbors. We are just to the north off 4A.

 

[killian]

The taxes for that house I was looking at turned out to be way more than I thought and now I'm looking at a house that the furnace runs on fuel oil. How much do you think it costs to have an oil burning furnace cleaned?

 

[Schlenkerla]

I do geothermal. My electric & gas bill combined is $80/month during the winter. Its roughly $120/mo in the summer.

BTW - My home is 3800 sqft and 3-stories. I also have about 90 windows, main floor is floor to ceiling glass on the east and west sides. The east wall basement walkout is all glass too. Worked for a window company when I built the thing. My bills would be lower if I used a reasonable amount of glass.

Geothermal is the cat's meow!