Furnace or wood?

[dustawaits]

Just how much is an electric furnace worth?

i can get wood almost free from the mill.  This stove will not hold the heat should I need to
leave for several days. 

But $5500 sounds like a lot of money for furnace and then pay monthly bills on top.

Would like to know the pros and cons before making a firm decision on Friday.
i have never had a furnace and know to little to make a decision.

[Cabin Fever]

Electric heat is VERY expensive in most places. If it were me, I would consider burning wood and having some portable electric space heaters. If you plan on leaving for a few days, the space heaters will keep your house warm enough so water pipes won;t freeze.

[dustawaits]

I do not like to depend on electricity. This house is easy to heat and cool anyway.
But you can not cook on an electric furnace or dry clothes....
I really like a cooler bedroom. I could buy several heaters..thinking about propane...

[gran29]

We have a couple of the electric tower heaters that do an amazing job and cost little to operate.
We have a wood burning furnace for the really cold days. Our air conditioning unit has a heat
strip but we havent used it at all in several years (used to turn it on when we just had a little am
chill; now we use the little tower heaters for that)

[sanjay]

Is that the only options?

Assuming you have indoor plumbing, have enough local heat to keep it from freezing. If it is individual heaters, 220 volt electric or natural gas/propane.

Zone your home. If the plumbing is indoors, it’s an indoor outhouse. Why constantly heat it to “room” temp? Something near that would be nice for a shower.

The kitchen is assumed heat.

Have plenty of bed clothes.

I don’t have an answer as you pose the question. A furnace wastes by heating unused area, or is inefficient when throttled. One central wood heat source requires a home design explicit to it.

To make a decision on HVAC in two days time is ill advised.

[Skandi]

Here for cost it's a no brainier. we use wood, yes that means with our old boiler there is no heating overnight and none when/if we go away, so we also use small fan (3kw) electric heaters with a defrost setting if we will be away for a few days when it is below freezing. But with electric running at 32c a KWh and wood at $84 a cord (all converted from the danish equivalents of course) Electric is hugely more expensive around 8X in our case. I could put a new boiler into this house which would help a lot with needing to fill it every hour and would gain some efficiency as well, but I would not consider an electric one.
PS although our boiler does NOT require electric (modern ones do) the pump does so we still have no heating if the power went.

[Ken]

I would love to have a wood stove.  Have about 7 acres of woods.  Wife has problems with wood smoke though, so we do electric.
Just installed a ductless mini split system (AC and heat) a couple months ago.  It worked well to cool the house and remove moisture from the air.  Now it's in heat mode and it works great.  It can only work down to a certain temp though as it extracts heat from the outside air.  Too cold = no heat to extract.  Will use electric space heaters at that point.  This will be the first year with it, so I'll see how well it works.

[Deleted]

Son has wood and individual thermostat controlled electric heater in bedroom and living area in his cabin. No fan, radient heat that rises up the wall and circulates. He has the plug in model with built in thermostat. He is gone all day, electric is set low, builds a fire when home, lets it die down in the evening before bed. Works very well for him. Don't really need air conditioning here, use ceiling fans and window shading in summer....James


www.eheat.com/categories/Wall-Mounted-Electric-Panel-Heaters/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=AAA%20-%20Search%20-%20Brand%20-%20USA%20-%20Exact&utm_term=eheat&utm_content=eHeat

[Deleted]

We had an electric heat pump as only heat in town, wouldn't do it again but, at the time, members of the household had severe allergies. It was great with the electronic filter system and air conditioning. We could keep the house closed up year around. It was a good sense house with the recirculating fan system for humidity control. Also quite affordable to operate but expensive to install. It would go to the heat strip if below about 35 degrees with high humidity.

Son had bad allergies but he found that with hard flooring and a no fan heating system he had no problems. He is even able to have a dog now....James

[Bear Foot Farm]

Use the wood heater when you're home and get a couple of thermostatically controlled propane heaters for when you're gone or when there is no power.

[dustawaits]

i am going wood and may get propane too. i love cooking on my wood stove and it certainly heats the whole house.

it is more work but it is worth it. i think i have found a new wood supplier and that will make a difference.
i do not like the sound of a furnace coming on. Wood is silent!

[feather]

I'm glad this post was here......even if you decided on wood. I hope it works out nicely. I would love to have wood heating but our house isn't designed in a way to allow a chimney for wood heat.

Of electric or gas heat. In 2008 we had the water in the basement issues, and had to replace a gas furnace. I looked at the 3 best brand name furnaces. I called for three estimates, one for each best brand name furnaces. I had quotes from $2000 to $12000. We went with $2000. That was 10 years ago, and no problems at all. Knock on wood!!!!!! Pun intended.

[Rustaholic]

We heat with wood and if we ever did go away for a couple nights it wouldn't take a half hour to completely drain all the plumbing in this house.

[dustawaits]

I am still burning wood.
The H&A pulled a fast one, I had a written price and he said $1700 more. I said
No.
I am going to have propane installed next week. It will be there when I get bad wood,
or no wood .
I do not like a cold house. 63-65 is ok.

[Maura]

We use propane, but have in-floor radiant heat. We own the tank and can buy in the summer when the propane prices are lowest. We also have 6 inches of insulation on the outer walls.

[dustawaits]

Maura, 6 inch walls are wonderful. Mine are 4-5 inches as the studs are hand hewn.
I insulated all the walls with 6 inch insulation as they had 2 inch.
Two walls I can not get to, so one I know is totally without insulation, the other
probably has 2 inch. 20 inches of insulation in the attic.
But 9 single pane windows with storms and three outside doors with storms still let in cold air.

[Maura]

One reason single panes let in cold air is because over time the wood pulls from the glass and the sashing form the window. You might be able to do something with the windows without replacing them.

[dustawaits]

They have all been reglazed. That made a difference!