My husband and I are looking for homes and we fell in love with a house that has radiant ceiling heat. We called the electric company and they gave us that house's last heating bill. It was $300 in the winter time!! This house also has 2 fireplaces, but honestly, fireplaces scare me especially with my kids. I could try to get use going and getting wood, but I'm afraid I'll hate it. Anyways, is this kind of high bill normal for radiant heating? Or do you think those people just used it too much and too high?
Also, it ts easy to put in a different source of heating? And just to clarify, it is $300 a month in the winter time.
Any old technology will cost to maintain and use. If you really love the house that much and you can stand to get a space heater, I would maybe opt for that until you can afford to do central heating and air. Honestly, I was raised using blankets.
Warm air rises, so I hope it was put in the ceiling of the basement, otherwise your first floor is likely to be cold.
$300 a month for heating in the winter in a cold climate sounds reasonable.
Fireplaces are not efficient at heating, and produce huge amounts of fine particulate matter that can be breathed deep into the lungs. An occasional fire is fine, but using it as a primary (or frequent secondary) source of heat sounds like it could cause long-term health problems.
We have radiator heating, (I think) and I love it for the respect that it is a constant temp in our place. Now we have a condo, so I do not know what the specific cost is.
things to look at and consider.
1. How old are the window? Did they seem to leak, if so this will drive up heating costs.
2. What is the temp they had it on? was it 70degrees or 80?
3. How cold/windy was it there in the last month?
4. Does it have central AC or window?
Good luck.
Warm air rises -- cold air drops. If you have any kind of ceiling heat your floors are going to be cold.
The fireplaces will help but they take a lot of maintence and if the chimmney doesn't close tightly when not in use the cold air will rush down the chimney and through your house.
Check with a heating contractor but I think it would be supper expensive to fix. -- I wouldn't buy the house.
I previously rented a home with radiant heating and $300 was an average winter bill for us. Take into consideration that that system was gas and we live in a warmer area than you. Our typical winter daytime temps are 50-60 and night time and 30-40 at night. Anyway... $300 sounds average to low to heat a house where you live especially if you're using electricity.
I wouldn't use the fireplaces as heat sources. You have to leave the flu open for awhile after the fire burns out and heat from your home gets sucked up the chimney - especially if it isn't ready to be shut when you go to bed and you end up leaving the flu open all night.
I'd put in a natural gas furnace ASAP if I bought that house. Electric heat is much more expensive than gas. Our 1900 sq foot house will old windows and crappy insulation costs about $130 to heat each month in our cooooold Wisconsin winters.
I can't answer to radiant heating... $300 for a winter utility bill sounds good to me.
I wanted to respond regarding the fireplaces. Why are you afraid of them?
We used to have wood burning fireplace (with gas ignighter) in the first house we built. We loved the fire but burning wood in the fireplace jsut made our allergies crazy and I didn't like the clean up either.
When we built this house, we opts for gas logs in the fireplace. I LOVE this option. It is warm, clean and no allergy issues due to the smoke, etc.
Hubby loves a real fire so we did the firepit outside for the real fire.
We love the gas log option. Just a thought.
I was renting my grandmothers home for the last 3 years and 300.00 was normal for her in the winter but she heated the who house and electric was really high in the small town we lived in. (They owned their own electric, charged what they wanted) BUT It was just my son and I and every winter I got it down to around 150.00. I also worked from home, but we didn't heat it really high either. Just to clarify we are always cold so no we didn't leave it to low usually around 76*. But the trick was to close the doors to the rooms you don't use and if you are not home during the day turn the temp lower. Also for us I baked a lot so the stove helped to heat the house. In the evening we dropped it down to 70* - 72*. The electric company actually called me to find out how we got it so low because they have never in history of that house had it that low.
That is cheap for the middle of winter. Oil heat is much more than that gas is maybe a little less. It depends on the size of the house, square feet. And if u don't want to heat the whole house they have a lot of safe affordable space heaters available now. Good luck! You should be fine.
just to give you one perspective, when we lived in ny (until 1.5 months ago) our oil bill (oil heating) was 600+ every 4 weeks. we also had a fireplace that was on (using pellets) during the day. so 300 during winter months is not a lot.
