We own a older two story home. We are retired and on a fixed income. When we purchased this home years ago it had one of the old fashioned floor furnaces. We do not have the $$ or want to put in a forced air heating unit. But we do need something economical and that will heat most of the house. We have 2200 sq ft. My husband has heard great things about a Rinnai Wall Furnace. Any advice would be appreciated. Here is a photo of our home.

These suggestions are only for temporary / work envirnments and not meant to be for a habitable house What do you think of wood stove heating? I would suggest that you try this for your 1st step. 1. Go to Google's Alerts. It gives you 3 fields to fill. A What to look for - B. Your email C. How often to send you updates. In the what to look for I would suggest you use a trick that google offers. Here's how it works. site:houston.craigslist.org "wood stove" Type that into google and test it to see that it works. You should see links to people selling wood stoves.* Make sure you then actually go to craigslist.org and find out the real url (address) for your area. Tip:It won't be Houston. Once you figure out the right Clist address for your location then type that into the Google alert for the 'thing' that you're looking for. The idea is to search only craigslist for your area. You can use that trick for any website. So if you have a newspaper classified locally use their addess for a separate Google Alert. * I used "wood stove" as the search term because if someone were selling a wood chair and they also were selling a gas stove then putting in just site:houston.craigslist.org wood stove would find hits on the ads that aren't necessarily selling only 'wood stoves' (dont' use the plural in the search) Try other combinations of words. If your local people have a different way to say 'wood stove' then use that instead. You might want to consider a "pellet stove". Ok . That will get you on track for locating a wood stove for the right price. Wood in your area according to your neighbor(above) seems like a good choice. If you want some other source of heat you still have that tool I gave you. Re: ducting. Let's say you find some kind of heat source and want to install some kind of duct to get heat around the house just because you don't want 6 stoves. 1. You could use , for $60, the following. A. A 4" plastic drain pipe without holes B. A leaf blower C. A dimmer switch. Connecting the 4" pipe ($20 / 100 feet home depot) to the output or the input of the leaf blower and using the dimmer on the leaf blower to adjust the speed will get you air movement into the areas you want. How you route it is up to you. I sense you are working in a temporary environment and that is a temporary solution. What you learn by tinkering a bit will be useful. I say input or output because the blower will work better on one side or the other. Just set it a the lowest setting and put it , input or output (blowing) , to test which way it works best. It will be quieter if you put it as outupt because the blower will be far away. But it could be more efficient as 'input' (sucking air) and you might get by with a very low setting. Note: I have built this for myself and it works fine. How you collect the heat to get it into the blower is going to be up to you. I assume that if you suck warm air from the ceiling of one room that will be warm enough to help warm an adjacent room. It was in my case. - 2nd idea Small gas stoves were used everywhere in the 1900's. They connected to natural gas and you had an open flame. They are probably illegal due to CO gas. But if your house is not especially well sealed they're as safe now as they were in 1900. And you can vent many of them to the outside as the ones I've seen have a hole for the vent if you choose. Most are about 2' high or less and have a metal burner. They put out about 10,000 btu. That is equal to 2 electric heaters. They all say what they output in BTU. 1 electric heater is 5280 BTU. Buy a CO detector if you go that route. Get one with a digital readout and take enough readings to understand how much, if any, CO accumulates. Once you know you can expect it to stay the same until you change something like insulation of the room. Use blankets with the heater OFF when you go to sleep. Good luck These suggestions are only for temporary / work envirnments and not meant to be for a habitable house Last point - Don't kill somebody.

@creekgirl, you wrote 'tuckpointing'? Do you mean pointing the brickwork on the chimney? Well, shortform on fireplace - in old-style fireplace venting through standard chimney, as someone wrote above, very inefficient as draws in cold air, plus pollution in the house, there are safety issues, etc. And if the damper is not working well, you might be losing warm air all the time, even when not in use. You'd get the pointing done if the existing chimney was in bad shape, but not clear if that's the issue or would be enough (chimney rebuild?). If you're renting it out, do you want to deal with all those issues? You could put a fireplace insert in the fireplace spot - basically a wood stove - which often now requires direct air from outdoors - and they'd most likely run a metal chimney through the existing. Better in most respects but still, it has to be operated correctly with good quality wood; do you want this in a rental unit? Or a gas fireplace (closed, venting through the chimney) is possible, but would it be worth it to have another gas appliance for what might only be occasional use? Keep in mind that depends on other heat. For a relatively small place, a good fireplace might be nice to have, but may kick out a lot of heat. This is before even considering the code issues. By all means get it looked at, but it might not be worth it, and easier to close up the chimney entirely. I know a lot of people with fireplaces and fireplace inserts who use them rarely (like once or twice a year) or not at all. (Note you may need the chimney to be looked at even if you're not planning on using - just to check for water damage/structural stability - but it's a different level of work if not planning on using it).

What about something like this? I cut and paste within the context of a two stall plan with a one bedroom apartment along the back. The apartment was a bit convoluted, but left the entry bath and storage as is. I am assuming this was to give visitor access to the bathroom without going through the bedroom. And the kitchen was on the exterior back which buried the LR in the middle so I juggled that. I also think this is two small for a two car garage, I would want it several feet wider and deeper. I feel like this sort of reiterates your house, this also could be mostly glass along the lake view