House heating

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Originally Posted By: BMWTurboDzl
Vent free gas fireplace.

A product of combustion is moisture. Vent free put a tremendous amt of moisture into the house. It's a big, no, no. Had a vent free and got rid of it. The room felt like a steam bath.
 
Originally Posted By: abycat
electric baseboards. Easy and cheap to install and 100% efficiant with no maintenance.

Electric heat costs many times that of natural gas.

I see that natural gas is an option at this house. Hook it up and get a 95% efficient boiler or furnace. There shouldn't be any debate at this point.
 
Resistance is the most absurdly inefficient heat there is. In resistance heat you take 3 Btu's of carbon fuels and then get out 1 Btu as delivered electricity. Then that 1 Btu is all converted in resistance heat yielding 1 Btu. Using a heat pump will produce 3 Btus from the 1 Btu of electricity.

Propane at 93% efficiency at $1.50/ gallon delivers a KW of heat for 6 cents compared to a KW ofr resistance heat which will be at leasty 13 cents..
 
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Originally Posted By: Al
Resistance is the most absurdly inefficient heat there is. In resistance heat you take 3 Btu's of carbon fuels and then get out 1 Btu as delivered electricity. Then that 1 Btu is all converted in resistance heat yielding 1 Btu. Using a heat pump will produce 3 Btus from the 1 Btu of electricity.

Propane at 93% efficiency at $1.50/ gallon delivers a KW of heat for 6 cents compared to a KW ofr resistance heat which will be at leasty 13 cents..

Hooray! Someone gets it!

Natural gas is cheaper yet. I wish I had service at my place.
 
If it hasn't been done, upgrading the insulation should be top priority. If you are losing the heat through the ceiling, it doesn't matter what system you have.
 
Originally Posted By: Bandito440
Originally Posted By: Al
Resistance is the most absurdly inefficient heat there is. In resistance heat you take 3 Btu's of carbon fuels and then get out 1 Btu as delivered electricity. Then that 1 Btu is all converted in resistance heat yielding 1 Btu. Using a heat pump will produce 3 Btus from the 1 Btu of electricity.

Propane at 93% efficiency at $1.50/ gallon delivers a KW of heat for 6 cents compared to a KW ofr resistance heat which will be at leasty 13 cents..

Hooray! Someone gets it!

Natural gas is cheaper yet. I wish I had service at my place.


The real question should be what's the price of electricity and the price of natural gas? I bought some natural gas space heaters off a guy who converted to electricity. In certain areas of the country, there's dams and their electric rates are lower and due to their location, natural gas is higher. So it was actually cheaper for them to run electricity.
 
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Originally Posted By: Bandito440
Originally Posted By: Al
Resistance is the most absurdly inefficient heat there is. In resistance heat you take 3 Btu's of carbon fuels and then get out 1 Btu as delivered electricity. Then that 1 Btu is all converted in resistance heat yielding 1 Btu. Using a heat pump will produce 3 Btus from the 1 Btu of electricity.

Propane at 93% efficiency at $1.50/ gallon delivers a KW of heat for 6 cents compared to a KW ofr resistance heat which will be at leasty 13 cents..

Hooray! Someone gets it!

Natural gas is cheaper yet. I wish I had service at my place.


The real question should be what's the price of electricity and the price of natural gas? I bought some natural gas space heaters off a guy who converted to electricity. In certain areas of the country, there's dams and their electric rates are lower and due to their location, natural gas is higher. So it was actually cheaper for them to run electricity.
That's very true. I mentioned municipal electric districts and included a fuel calculator in a prior post. Electricity would have to be very cheap, but there are a few places around.
 
One other thing I thought I'd mention if you're still following this thread:

If the basement is unheated, insulated pipes for a boiler and radiator system would probably have the least loss of energy. If they do go with forced hot air, make sure those ducts get insulated as well.
 
Originally Posted By: whip
Originally Posted By: EdwardC
Is the house connected to natural gas? What's the cooking stove powered off of?

The house is all electric. NG is available, but it's never been hooked up.

Originally Posted By: Rand
Why are the heating elements in the ceiling? heat rises.. are there ceiling fans?

It's the worst design ever, and common in their neighborhood. I've never seen it anywhere else. They do have ceiling fans.

Originally Posted By: Bandito440
If they live in an area with natural gas service, a forced hot air system or boiler and radiators will be easy enough to install in a single story ranch with basement. Even heating oil or propane will be a savings over electricity.

My parents are leaning towards a boiler. I think a forced air system would be better. It would also give the option of central air down the road.

Originally Posted By: ragtoplvr
Google Mini split heat pumps.

That's a good option. I'll let them know about it.


I have seen a few houses in my neighborhood with this kind of heat. Very Poor design, it is supposed to be radiant heat. but heat radiates to the attic more than it does to the living space below.

1. Please check your parents electric bill, they should be getting a break in electric/unit $$ being all electric.

here is what I would be short term:
1. Main living areas like bedroom/living room: add wall mounted space heater with digital temp control. you can get these for $30 a pop. I have one in every room above my garage, it is very cold in those rooms due to lack of insulation in the garage ceiling.
2. Add split unit heat pumps in bedroom and living room areas. These cost nearly $1000 a pop and works up to 38F for heat. Any cooler, you will not get ANY heat. Not sure if they come with a built in heating element for emergency heat.

Long term:
1. Have Nat gas hooked up and install sealed vented heater/fireplaces in the main areas. Cost is lowest per unit of heat. but you are looking at $3k for boiler or hvac, plus vent or piping.
 
Originally Posted By: Bandito440
Originally Posted By: Al
Resistance is the most absurdly inefficient heat there is. In resistance heat you take 3 Btu's of carbon fuels and then get out 1 Btu as delivered electricity. Then that 1 Btu is all converted in resistance heat yielding 1 Btu. Using a heat pump will produce 3 Btus from the 1 Btu of electricity.

Propane at 93% efficiency at $1.50/ gallon delivers a KW of heat for 6 cents compared to a KW ofr resistance heat which will be at leasty 13 cents..

Hooray! Someone gets it!


haha that's funny. do you guys know what the definition of efficiency is?

if the guys house was at the bottom of niagra falls and his electric came from the generator there, tell me how that is absurdly inefficient ?
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I do understand efficiency.

7% of electricity in the U.S. Is produced by hydropower.
66% is produced by burning fossil fuels in generators that are at best 40% efficient (coal) and 60% efficient (natural gas).

There's also cost efficiency to consider. Unless he's in a municipal electric district with discounted rates, electric heat is double to triple the cost of natural gas per BTU.
 
Originally Posted By: Bandito440

There's also cost efficiency to consider. Unless he's in a municipal electric district with discounted rates, electric heat is double to triple the cost of natural gas per BTU.

And add to that heat pumps provide 3KW of heat per 1 KW electricity delivered. Resistance heat provides 1 KW for 1 KW electricity delivered.
 
Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: Bandito440

There's also cost efficiency to consider. Unless he's in a municipal electric district with discounted rates, electric heat is double to triple the cost of natural gas per BTU.

And add to that heat pumps provide 3KW of heat per 1 KW electricity delivered. Resistance heat provides 1 KW for 1 KW electricity delivered.

This is a good point, although I believe NG is still generally cheaper, but by a much smaller margin. Do you have any experience with their use in cold climates? My understanding is that their efficiency drops considerably when temperatures approach 0F.

A geothermal system would be great, although I'm certain the initial cost would be prohibitive to the OP.
 
Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: Bandito440

There's also cost efficiency to consider. Unless he's in a municipal electric district with discounted rates, electric heat is double to triple the cost of natural gas per BTU.

And add to that heat pumps provide 3KW of heat per 1 KW electricity delivered. Resistance heat provides 1 KW for 1 KW electricity delivered.


heat pumps are equal to spending a dollar to save a dime.

You have take into consideration the cost of the heat pump. I had one in Liberty, MO. I worked well for the months the temps were above 40F. but the unit needed a relay switch every 18 months, few hundred dollars out of pocket.

IMHO, sealed fireplaces with circ fans are great buys, also vented radiant heater (but these are pricey), like the ones they in RVs.

I don't like large objects like a heat radiator, or a fireplace taking up space in my already tiny home. So I went with little digital space heaters, I set them at 65F and forget about it :)

Sometime you have to consider what is easy and cheap.

Using the space heaters, my electric bill went up by $60 a month, each space heater cost me $10 on sale from wallys.
I need the space heater 3 to 4 months each year, total cost $250 a year.
 
An 80 percent efficient furnace can be had for 700-800 dollars. That comes with no piping to exhaust it.

I would have a contractor come and put in a 92%+ efficiency unit, and plumb all the ducts to it. Natural gas.

I have seen some houses in Columbus Ohio that are all electric. Can't believe that, it gets quite cold there, and electric is not the way to go.

Heck, I had an all electric apartment in Austin Texas, and that was expensive to heat.

My new house in Texas has a Carrier forced air natural gas unit, and it is dirt cheap to run.
 
There was a time when all-electric homes were commonly built even in places that see real cold. This was when electric rates were much lower than they are today and IIRC, utilities used to give a discount on rates for all-electric homes.
The heating system installed in this home was probably the least-cost solution for the contractor when the house was built and electric rates were then low enough that buyers were okay with this, which was probably advertised as being clean, space efficient and draftless.
There is some confusion in this thread WRT efficiency.
Electric resistance heat may be 100% efficient, in that every watt of electricity is efficienty coverted to heat, but at what cost?
Most of us are more concerned about cost efficiency and natural gas wins by that rating every time. Natural gas is really cheap right now and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
Therefore, forced air heating fueled with nautral gas is probably the lowest cost solution.
A small hole can be dug at the gas main and another at the house with the line from house to main being directionally bored from main to house. A forced air install in a ranch with a full basement should be easy, since the ductwork can be easily run along the basement ceiling and under the floors.
A boiler is a possibility and the plumbing would be easy to run with a full basement. The cost factor would involve the need to run a convector along the full length of every exterior wall.
May the Lord help you if you have any sort of failure in really cold weather, since all of those convectors run along the base of outside walls are now vulnerable to freezing.
We have such a system and I hope that we never suffer a prolonged failure of either the boiler or power in really cold weather.
Our boiler is oil fueled, mainly because we have no natural gas in our area.
 
I'm not real familiar with boilers. I assumed the pipes were filled with something like antifreeze to prevent freezing if power is lost. Are they just filled with water?
 
no the pipes are not filled with antifreeze, they are usually filled with tap water plumbed from your city water or well pump going through a one way valve that reduces pressure to 15 psi. i believe using antifreeze in the heating system can be done, i've never seen or experienced it but i'm pretty sure every local code then requires that system not be connected at all to local water supply in order to prevent any possibility of back feeding and poisoning.
if you lose power and can't heat your house, if the house gets cold enough any hard pipe having water in it can burst. it's up to homeowner to recognize the situation and if there's going to be no power or no heat you gotta drain all the pipes, and hope the feed to the house if city water is below ground enough below frost line so that doesn't freeze. given way builders build today cutting corners and fraud/corruption with local gov't don't bet your house on it without checking and measuring.
one solution to the pipe bursting is not use pipe, use pex plastic tubing which is rated for heating, that stuff can freeze and not burst because it can take the expansion. and for existing homes it's much easier and economical to run pex rather than copper piping.


Originally Posted By: fdcg27

(a) The heating system installed in this home was probably the least-cost solution for the contractor when the house was built and electric rates were then low enough that buyers were okay with this, which was probably advertised as being clean, space efficient and draftless.

(b) Electric resistance heat may be 100% efficient, in that every watt of electricity is efficienty coverted to heat, but at what cost?

(c) Most of us are more concerned about cost efficiency and natural gas wins by that rating every time. Natural gas is really cheap right now and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Therefore, forced air heating fueled with natural gas is probably the lowest cost solution.


a) agree, and they probably skimped out on insulation to save costs too.

b) right. you can't base efficiency on the costs of how electricity, gas, or oil are produced, that's outside the scope of what the original question was asking. definition of efficiency here is: homeowner pays X dollars per unit for heat, either $/gallon of oil or $/per cubic foot of gas, or $/per kilowatt-hour being the total electric bill cost per month divided by kilowatt-hr used. don't get me started on electrical billing with generation charge vs distribution vs all the extra fraudulent taxes and surcharges which is like 1/4 of our bill. for a given unit of heat purchased, efficiency = how much of that goes into heating the house vs out the chimney.

c) natural gas condensing furnaces run 90% or better efficiency, oil furnaces are high 80's. electric is 100% however the cost per kilowatt that converts into btu's of heat is much higher than $2.50/gal of diesel that converts into 120k btu's of heat of which you see about 100k btu's of heat from. I don't know the conversion of kilowatt to btu. Even though gas heating is the most efficient and natural gas pricing is low you'll then find the cost of buying and installing such a unit then balances out and you really aren't saving (funny how that works). around here it runs around $20k for a 100k btu condensing gas unit that's typical for a normal size < 2000 sq ft house.
average oil use for normal size home < 2000 sq ft is 600-1000 gal per year.
the mansions in ct that are 3000+ square feet who keep every room in house heated, run something like 600+ gallons per month in winter and have a $30k or more oil bill for the year.
 
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