Heating Systems

I have used firewood for years.


(This might not work well if there are no fireplaces or woodburning stoves in your home)

I put in one of these in my last place, pricey, but it cut my heating bills way down -

http://www.htproducts.com/literature/lp-143.pdf

Hmmmmm..... I hadn't thought of that.

Thanks, Sturgis :-)

Osso
What does that system run on? I read through it, but couldn't figure it out.

What do you have now Montana?

We have oil.

I've heard something on forced air systems being good.

Gas heated water, in my case.

Here's another link. My installer connected mine to the old water radiator system.

http://www.radiantmax.com/r-munchkin-boilers.html

I don't know if it would work with an oil burner.

Ok, I thought I saw something about natural gas, but I don't think we're zoned for that.
We had natural gas in our home in the states and we found that to be costly as well. Don't know what the cost would be here in Canada, though.

Yes that's what we have. A heating unit is around $ 1500, pretty
efficient, clean and quiet. Do you have the duct work provided for it?

Oh, that's not at all what I thought it was. That's that floor heating system. My uncle was going to put that in his house when he built, but changed his mind for some reason.
Yeah, that is something that would interest me, but it obviously requires major installation work and I wonder how they would manage the second floor.
This would be an ideal thing to do when you're building a new house or are doing major renovations, but I think it would be out of our budget.

Thanks for the info, Osso. My uncle was describing this thing to me and it was cool to actually see the set up :-)

We have all the ducts that go through the house and we have a heat pump that forces the air, but the pump we have is crap. It's outside and only seems to want to work when we don't need it.
Our neighbors have a forced air unit in their house, which requires a heat pump, but their heat pump is inside the house.
i gather it would be easy to set a system up like this in my home.

Not sure what you want to spend, but you might check out a geothermal heat pump. Pricy up front but cuts the monthly bills down.

We're looking to spend in the area of $5,000.


Does that geothermal heat pump go inside the house?

some general info can be found here

http://www.geoexchange.org/about/how.htm

It puts pipe in the ground to do the heat transfer. The biggest upfront cost is probably the drilling.

Don't ignore the heat efficiency of your house. Adequate insulation and sealed doors and windows can make a significant dent in your heating bill. If I have you place correctly you are up on the Chignecto so solar is probably not an option, but passive solar might make a contribution. There are types of windows that can help here. Also I would not ignore electric systems. In combination with a wood stove passive solar and increased insulation it might be cost effective, particularly if you can turn off unused rooms, or those heated by the stove. Rather than thinking of one heating system you might want to consider a combination.

Our home is very well insulated and this is one thing I remember the home inspector telling us when we bought the house. We have air tight windows and doors throughout.
When our heat pump is working properly (rare when we need it) the difference in the heating cost is amazing.
Since we obviously need a new heating system and I'm pissed off about the oil situation, I want to rid of the oil.
You made some good points about the electric heat, Acquiunk, in fact our home has been set up for it and most of the rooms have their own heat control, but the baseboard heaters were just never put in.
We went and bought 3 electric fireplace heaters last year, so the 3 of us would have our own heater for the room we spend most of our time in and we saved a bundle on our heating cost, compared to what we were paying before.
This alone along with a bit better heating system and we'd be ok.

That's an interesting set up. I haven't read it all yet, but I will later and I'll give more thoughts on it.

Thanks :-)