What type of heating system do you use in your house?

[alex McCraw]

What type of heating system do you use for saving electric energy? Currently I am using electric stove, but it is too costly. So I am looking energy efficient heating system.

[George Bokros]

I heat the house, heat water, and dry clothes with natural gas but cook with electricity. I prefer to cook with natural gas but the combustion of natural gas in the open creates combustion residue that collects on everything as a greasy film.

George

[Dan Hintz]

We used to have a wood stove in the basement, but I got REAL tired of hauling/using 2-3 cords per season. Removed the inefficient wood stove and replaced it with a more compact (practically sits against the wall instead of the middle of the room), significantly more efficient (93%), nicer to look at, and higher functionality (it has a timer, like most home thermostats these days, and I can even turn it on with my cellphone if I'm coming home early) pellet stove.

Depending upon the winter, we go through 2-3 pallets of pellets, but those things are much easier to move, not to mention the lorry driver can bring the pallets down to our backyard... the wood could only be dumped in our driveway.

[Paul McGaha]

We have gas heat and hot water, electric cooking.

PHM

[Brian Elfert]

The house I am buying is currently heated with electric baseboard heaters and has no air conditioning. I talked to the electric utility and the electric bill for the last 12 months was just about $3,600. The house is on the wrong rate plan and the bill should have been closer to $5,000 for the past year. Mind you, this house has probably been vacant for over a year so I have no idea how the bank spent as much as $500 on electricity in a single month this past winter.

I plan to put in forced air heating/air conditioning with natural gas after I buy the house. The utility bill should drop in half once that is done. Less than a 10 year payback for the entire system including duct work.

[Charles Wiggins]

We have a heat pump and and a natural gas furnace mounted in ceiling.

A couple of years ago we had to replace our A/C unit so when we looked at the options we realized that it would be much more cost effective to go to a heat pump. We do get some cold snaps that would tax a heat pump so we elected to go to a duel-fuel system, which meant replacing the furnace with one that is compatible. When the outdoor temp gets down to around 37°F the system switches to the furnace instead of the heat pump.

We also have a fireplace insert in the basement. I try to keep a fire going on nights when the temperature is supposed to get low enough to kick over to the furnace. We leave the basement door open with a fan going at the top of the stairwell to help the warm air along. I can get plenty of firewood free, but I have to cut it, split it, and dry it, so it can be pretty labor intensive.

[David Weaver]

Natural gas. Costs me about $1200 to heat 1600 SF each year, kids and wife home all day.

If I lived by myself, it'd cost a lot less.

[Brian Elfert]

Natural gas. Costs me about $1200 to heat 1600 SF each year, kids and wife home all day.

If I lived by myself, it'd cost a lot less.

If you had it your way you would probably be like the working class folks who die with $3 million in the bank because they never spent any money. I prefer to be reasonably comfortable at 69 to 70 degrees in the winter rather than save $10 a month and be cold all winter. My previous house I spent about $1,100 on gas for heat and hot water from June 2013 through May 2014. It is colder in Minnesota, but there is nobody home during the day so I turn the heat down.

[Rick Potter]

In SoCal, most homes are heated with natural gas, some older homes have NG floor furnaces, or wall units, while most have forced air NG.

In our house (two family) we have two separate NG forced air units which are rated around 92% efficient. We have an enclosed patio room, where one grandkid spends all her time, with a NG fireplace which is rated as a 75% efficient furnace. Two of the grandkids bedrooms have always been very hot or cold, even after putting in special zones to address the issue, so we are now arranging to get a two station electric heat pump setup to augment those two rooms.

Oh yeah, we also have a 220V electric heater in the shop, along with a small AC/heater in the attached office (man cave).

If that doesn't confuse you, be assured it confuses me :confused: .

[Bruce Volden]

I heat with wood (like Dan used to til he "girlied out") ;)
I also have an efficient heat pump-(things like these should be outlawed here in South Dakota-non-stop run when temps get into the low 20's, below 0 most of the winter so are COMPLETELY USELESS!!!!)
I'm in my 60's and hate handling wood soooo many times but, I have lots of it and it is essentially free.....

Bruce

[Brett Luna]

We have a hot water baseboard system fed by a NG-fired boiler. It didn't take us long after moving in to figure out that we didn't have enough radiator footage for our house size so a few years ago, we had Slant/Fin high-output commercial baseboards installed. This doubled the footage with the same number of baseboards. Now we hardly use our supplemental wood stove.

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

We started out with a scary massive wood stove in the 1900's farmhouse rental we are in. It still has the original windows and was originally built without power or plumbing. After 1 winter with that deteriorating stove, we pulled that out and installed a pellet stove that has a hopper large enough for 2+ bags of pellets. We go through roughly 2 pallets of pellets a month during the winter or 2-3 bags per day. We're really looking forward to finally having a house of our own again that has "real" windows, insulation and heating!

[Lee Schierer]

We heat and cool our house with a geothermal heat pump. For electric only it is the lowest cost system you can get once you get past the initial investment. Our pay back on the initial investment was about 5 years when we switched from base board electric heaters to geothermal. It is clean, quiet and cheaper by far than conventional heat pumps, propane or oil and generally gives natural gas a run for its money.

[Dan Hintz]

Depending upon the winter, we go through 2-3 pallets of pellets for the season!


We go through roughly 2 pallets of pellets a month during the winter or 2-3 bags per day.

Hooooolyyyyyy schnikees... 2-3 pallets/month?! That's mucho expensive!

[Jim Koepke]

Alex,

Welcome to the Creek. Your profile doesn't list a location. That would have a lot to do with determining what may be best for your need.

My home is in rural southwest Washington state. We have gas to the greenhouse, but not the residence. We mostly use our wood stove to heat the house in the winter.

Last year we mostly burned mill ends from a local supply. The bill came to about $70. This year we removed a few trees and may have enough firewood for two winters.

When you cut your own firewood it actually provides you with heat more than once... When you cut it, when you split it, when you stack it, when you carry it in and when you finally burn it.

EDIT: I may have misunderstood since you are asking what type of heating. Are you talking house heating or kitchen cooking?

We have an electric stove. Here in Washington electricity is cheap compared to gas.

jtk

[Shawn Pixley]

Cooktop is natural gas. Ovens are electric. Furnace and waterheater are gas (highest efficiency available). I have solar PV panels on the roof.

[Greg R Bradley]

HEATING?

None. I'm working on my house and the gas has been disconnected to the central gas heating for almost 10 years. You only miss it about 10 days a year.

I frequently have to turn on the A/C in my office or bedroom in what we laughingly call "Winter" in SoCal. I planted 7 24" box trees to shade the west side of my house last fall so hopefully I won't have to run the A/C so much next winter.

[Rick Potter]

Greg, you sound just like my brother. Could you possibly be a bachelor?

He lives in W. Covina, alone, and always brags about how cheap he can heat the house. We had a family Christmas there one year, and everybody wore their jackets in the house until my wife got up, said "that's enough", and fired up his furnace for him.

Rick Potter

[Garth Almgren]

My former house was a townhouse with electric baseboard heaters and electric hot water. Garage and entry on the first floor, living space on the 2nd and 3rd floors. The very first electric bill I got was a huge shock - turns out the entry way was a bit of a heat sink, and the heater down there was working 24/7 to try and heat the entry, only to have all the heat escape up the stairway to the living area. I very quickly installed programmable thermostats in the living areas, and shut off that entry heater completely. Kept the thermostats at 52 during the day when nobody was home, 68 in the morning and evenings, and 58 at night. I also installed a blower in the gas fireplace, and with the fireplace running for a couple hours with the blower on, it would heat the whole 2nd and 3rd floor nicely. The entry was frigid year round, but my very next electric bill was reduced by around 60%, whereas my gas bill was only increased by about $10 a month.

My new house has a natural gas furnace (forced air) and gas water heater. Our gas bill has gone up but gas is still pretty cheap here, and the electric bill has stayed about the same so utilities have come out to be not much more than the townhouse despite having about 1000 more square feet.

My parents had propane inserts installed in both of their fireplaces, and they're on automatic thermostats with blowers. Those two fireplaces really heat the house well.

Can you tell I'm a fan of gas heat? That, and programmable thermostats. :)

[Joe Mioux]

forced hot air using natural gas..... would much rather have hot water heat boiler. At one of my shops, we have in floor hot water, very very nice!

[David Weaver]

forced hot air using natural gas..... would much rather have hot water heat boiler. At one of my shops, we have in floor hot water, very very nice!

I grew up with baseboard heat, hot water. We had a lot of trouble in really cold months with pipes freezing. Now that I have hot air, I've gone the other way - it's faster to heat and cool, though there are no static "hot" points that you can stand near. And the big benefit, to me, is that almost all of the dust in the entire house ends up in the furnace filter instead of sitting on everything in the house.

Parents have a radiant floor in part of their house, water fired, and I'll admit that's really nice in the winter. Knocks the dogs and cats right out - they know exactly where the warmest spot of the floor is.

[Brian Elfert]

One of my co-workers has an old house with cast iron radiators. She loves the radiant heat and says she would never live in a house with forced air. She seems to think the heat distributes better and she doesn't like the drafts and noise with forced air. She is getting central A/C installed in the attic and then it will just gravity feed the rest of the house. No idea how that will work.

I'm the exact opposite. I really don't want anything to do with radiant heat. Radiant heat is somewhat common it seems in houses built in the 60 and 70s around here. I want central air and not really possible without forced air.

[David Weaver]

One of my co-workers has an old house with cast iron radiators. She loves the radiant heat and says she would never live in a house with forced air. She seems to think the heat distributes better and she doesn't like the drafts and noise with forced air. She is getting central A/C installed in the attic and then it will just gravity feed the rest of the house. No idea how that will work.

I'm the exact opposite. I really don't want anything to do with radiant heat. Radiant heat is somewhat common it seems in houses built in the 60 and 70s around here. I want central air and not really possible without forced air.

Central A/C is definitely an issue, and so is distribution of supplemental heat if you have another source. Retrofit for my parents' house was $18k.

FIL heats with oil, and he's getting tired of paying for oil. He's got an extra flue in his basement that he'd like to put a wood stove to, but no way to distribute the hot air other than to leave the basement door open (which his wife won't tolerate). if he had a forced air system, he'd only need to get the heat to one part of the house and then let the ducting circulate it.

Bot my parents and FIL have the same sense that your co-worker has, that the baseboard and radiator heat is "better heat" because of the lack of fluctuation, and the noise, I suppose. When the circulator turns on, though, both FIL and parents' houses make plenty of noise as the hot water starts to flow.

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

Hooooolyyyyyy schnikees... 2-3 pallets/month?! That's mucho expensive!

Yes. Very. All the more reason we need out of that place. We were only supposed to live in it long enough to build a new house on the acreage and then tear it down. The owner kept flip-flopping on the deal and seriously believes the farmhouse property is worth over $200k more than it really is. He's in total denial on how bad a shape the farmhouse really is. The roof "can't leak because the pitch of the roof is too steep" .... yet we have buckets all over the place. We would have moved to another rental years ago, but easier said then done when you have livestock. We would need to goat-proof any fencing at the rental and just like the farmhouse, we won't recover any of those costs.

[Grant Wilkinson]

I'm in the Great White North.

My forced air high efficiency furnace is natural gas, as are my cook top and oven, my hot water tank, my clothes dryer, my fireplace and my barbecue.

[Dennis Aspö]

Finland (63.1°N), hydronic floor heating in a floating and insulated concrete slab. Nibe F1245 heat pump connected to a 130 meter deep borehole that's in front of the house.

There's a sealed loop of brine like fluid going between the pump and borehole, this extracts heat from the ground water, the pump is incredibly effective at extracting heat from the small differential and this heats the house and provides warm water needs, when it gets really cold (can get down to -30C or more in winter here) there's an electric resistance heater that can kick in for supplemental energy.

Our house is so new that we have not yet been able to log how much electricity we'll use per year. But for houses of similar size we're read that about 6000kwh per year in electricy for heating purposes is likely. With direct electric heating we'd look at 20 000kwh or more per year.

It will be interesting to see as we're building to high energy standards, thick insulation, the works, and we're buying energy efficient machines (just got my 3-phase 400v induction stove top) and using almost exclusively LED based lighting. Even the ground around the house and to foundation itself is insulated out to a meter.

We also have a fireplace with an accumulating masonry heater (the material absorbs heat and releases it for many hours, it weighs over a metric ton) for additional cheap heating and the ventilation system recycles heat from air that's leaving the house and uses it to heat incoming air to minimize energy losses there too.

[Dan Hintz]

Even the ground around the house and to foundation itself is insulated out to a meter.

Want more info on this one, Dennis... foam insulation in a protective box?

[Dennis Aspö]

Well I guess pictures might help, fortunately I've keep a detailed photo journal of the construction since we started last year, here's the foundation when it was first cast:
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7323/9947653224_45180c1386_c.jpg

On the inside you can see a layer of insulation. That's the "vertical insulation", then on the inside it's first filled with a layer of gravel that has capillary action breaking properties. Then I think it was 200mm of "horizontal foam insulation". Then there's more gravel on top of that. Then they cast the slab that will be the floor on inside this, after all the pipe work and such is done of course.

The ground outside the foundation is also fitted with weeping tile and drainage wells in 4 corners and more weeping tile that drains the whole system on the edge of the property. Then foam insulation is laid on the ground around the foundation, then plastic (not needed to meet code but we went further than required) to protect the foam as despite it being water resistant over many years it can still become waterlogged. Finally another layer of black plastic is laid around the foundation and the ground filled in to near final ground level. Looks like this when all said and done (before casting concrete):
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3743/10293470613_32a757f0ea_c.jpg

I have no pictures of the insulation itself being laid out around the house unfortunately but it's under there.

[Ed Aumiller]

Put in geothermal heat pump over 20 years ago for house... only way to go in my opinion... provides both heating and a/c...

Just put LP gas furnace in stand alone shop.... expect to pay about $300 for gas this winter for shop...

Installed an air tight wood stove when built house (37 years ago)... barely used it except in emergency until Superstorm Sandy hit and we were without power for days...
Brought in firewood I keep for camping and loved the heat the stove provided... so last year heated mostly with wood... have plenty on my property so no cost for it...

[Moses Yoder]

We had a wood forced air furnace with propane furnace back up when we moved in. We burned wood for a while but that is a lot of work and messy. I probably would have kept it up except for the fact that we were cutting wood for my parents first and then cutting ours. We took the wood stove out and have never regretted it. We had several furnaces go bad and finally spent about $2K on an Amana installed by a reputable dealer. It is a nice two stage deal, keeps the house comfortable. One of the advantages of living in a small house (1200 sq ft) is lower heating costs. If I ever have to replace the furnace I am buying a pellet fired furnace.

[Al Launier]

Water boiler/baseboard heat - (2) window units (15.1K BTU/ea) for A/C - electric stove/cooking. Live in NH. Cost is $3,685/this coming winter season @ $3.35/gal for 1,100 gal. oil

[Steve Peterson]

The house we just sold has propane forced air heating. The first winter we moved in was costing us $500-800 per month for propane. We put in a pellet stove and our heating costs went down to about $800 for the entire year. I wanted a normal wood stove, but my wife made me "girlie out" like Dan. It didn't take too long to really like it. We got an Astroflam Integra with electric start and a 140lb hopper. You can load it with over 3 bags at a time and it will run for days. All you have to do is push a button and walk away. It burns all night without constant care and feeding. There is no mess from bark or other wood pieces all over the place. It also can be installed with much less clearance because the flame is better controlled. The pellet stove is about 9" away from sheetrock and the 3" stovepipe is 1" away. I recall that the installed price was less than $4000 about 6 years ago.

Our cabin with a wood stove seems like you are constantly carrying wood. Plus it is always cold in the morning and takes an hour or so to warm up the house.

Steve

[BOB OLINGER]

We switched from natural gas heat & electrical AC to geothermal for both a year ago and don't look back for a second. Unbelievably uniformly comfortable 52 wks per year. After getting through the initial cost, operating cost is very reasonable.

[Brian Elfert]

I would love to do geothermal, but the numbers just don't pencil out for me. From the numbers I am seeing I would save between $300 and $500 a year compared to natural gas. At an additional cost of at least $15,000 it could take 30 years to pay back the extra cost. I wish I had a crystal ball to know where energy prices might be going in the next decade or two. If natural gas prices go up geothermal might make more sense then. Geothermal absolutely makes sense with propane.

My guess is geothermal is more comfortable because the system runs more often stopping the peaks and valleys during heating season. Geothermal doesn't produce as much instantaneous heat as a natural gas or propane furnace can produce. I've been told you need to minimize setting the temperature back with geothermal is it takes too long to bring the temp up.

[Ed Aumiller]

Brian, if you already have a forced air system and want to do a little of the work yourself, you can save a bundle on installing a geothermal system...

Since the refrigerant is totally contained in the unit, you can buy the furnace on ebay / online and install that portion yourself... you do NOT need a refrigerant licensed installer like you do on a standard heat pump...

Hire someone with a backhoe to bury the pipe and install the circulation pump yourself...

My son & I installed his system (a 4-ton unit with superheater for hot water) for less than $6000 total cost... (this included duct work)

I installed my system for less than $2500 ( a 3-ton unit w/o superheater) but it was 20 years ago... (this included duct work also)

Considering the federal tax credits it really brings it down to a break even time of less than 5 years in my opinion... this is not considering any state / local credits.. on both mine and my son's, with the tax credits, the payback time was about 2-3 years...


Also, when you have someone else install it, they always insist on putting resistance back up heaters in... this is absurd, if you loose power or the fan quits, your still do not have heat... neither of us has auxiliary heaters and never had a problem in over 30 years of combined service...

[Brad Adams]

neither of us has auxiliary heaters and never had a problem in over 30 years of combined service...

Neither of you live in Minnesota either where the temperature gets much colder. The unit MUST have a back up heat source in a cold climate, the unit cannot produce enough heat when the loop temps get cold during the winter months.

[Donna Cooper]

I am using wood burning stove to heat my home. I is energy efficient way to heat my home. It also cutting down my electricity bills.

[Brian Elfert]

Neither of you live in Minnesota either where the temperature gets much colder. The unit MUST have a back up heat source in a cold climate, the unit cannot produce enough heat when the loop temps get cold during the winter months.

I live in the Minneapolis metro area in Minnesota and I don't recall any geothermal companies ever recommending backup heat when I talked to them. Some have recommended having a natural gas furnace to qualify for the dual fuel electric rate although some are saying it makes more sense to go with the all electric option instead. The dual fuel rate for electricity for heating/cooling only is 5.85 cent/kw, for all electric is 9.5 cents/kw for all electricity year round, and the normal rate is just over 11 cents per kw.

[Dennis Aspö]

Over here it's a standard feature of the heat pump, built in. Don't know if you can even buy them without one. You can disable it in menu though, but it might be needed in winter when it gets between -4 and -22F at its coldest.