You should post your question in the fireplace forum to get lots of opinions. There is such a forum on gardenweb. My neighbor had some sort of deluxe fireplace installed. Not sure if it was an upgrade or if he never had one. He goes through mountains of wood but says it heats his whole house. He has a family room with a cathedral ceiling that has an opening to the second floor hallway and since heat rises...I think he said he used 5 cords of wood. I'm not sure, but I do recall thinking it was a lot of wood and it wasn't free (maybe one batch was free). I don't know how healthy that is to heat your house all the time with wood. Maybe it has doors and a filter...I don't know. He just got his gas bill and it was $50. Mine was $115, but I did have my mother-in-law here for a week with her "thin" FL blood so we had to keep the heat at 70-72 rather than 66-68. Neighbor and I both have tankless water heater. You might consider wood as a cheaper back up option and also ask on the other forum about a unit that can use gas and/or wood. That's what I would do if I had the $. On another note...MY gas usage on the current bill was higher than last year. Last year we used 65 ccf for a 28 day bill period with avg temp on bill listed as 49.6 This year we used 82 Ccf on a 33 day cycle with a temp of 45.5. The longer bill cycle, lower temp and mother-in-law makes it hard for me to see if my 97% heater,air sealing and tankless SAVED me anything over my old 91% furnace without air seal and my 57% water heater. I have to wait for a bill cycle that more closely matches the temp etc to tell if it helped or not.

tigerdunes, The split system is the one that's down. The packaged unit works - the AC part, not so much, though - but we're planning on replacing everything at one time, including the outside AC on the split system since it started acting up this past summer as well. Our house is complicated - the original part of the house is a 900sq/ft ranch on a crawlspace with 2 bedrooms, den, bathroom and laundry room and that side is serviced by the package unit. The 'newer' side of the house is about 1200 sq/ft on a slab and a 2 story (well, 1 1/2, really) with the kitchen, living room and dining room downstairs and 2 small bedrooms and a bath upstairs. This side has one split system to service both levels. The current unit does (or did) a good job of circulating air both upstair and down, but one of the upstairs bedrooms is my husband's Man Cave and his computer equipment keeps the room hot. He uses a small window air conditioner in the summer just for his room to keep the equipment and himself cool. When both systems are running, we close a door (it's the original solid wood exterior door) between the 2 'wings' of the house so neither system is overworked. I'm scared of future propane prices, too. If money were no object I'd install geothermal, but unfortunately I'm not Bill Gates. :-) One other thing I'm concerned about is having enough electrical oomph to power a heat pump. The house is old and the wiring needs to be replaced anyway and I'm afraid we'd need to bring in an electrician for the heat pump. Or is the 200 amp service mainly for the heat strips in electric back up applications?

"it happens quite infrequently. About every few days" You consider such erratic behavior every few days to be infrequent? The test I use for myself to decide what I can handle on my own versus what I need an expert for is this: Do I know what the cause of the problem is and do I know what steps are required and in what order will fix it? If yes, do it. If not, use the telephone.

Thank you for the replies so far. I thought my reply went through the other day, but this forum just doesn't work great for me for some reason. I lost my original post a couple times as well! I'll try again. what is your thermostat setting... Set to 70 mostly now. what is outside temperature... It was mid 80s lately and what is your supply temp at several locations within your home??? ....what is age of your AC condenser?... I believe it is 15 years old, possibly more - Is your thermostat set correctly? I think so? - Did you change your filters? yes, within the last month/weeks - Check to see if your condenser is dirty The outside fan thing? Yes I cleaned it using Simple Green, but I will do this again - Check to see if there is a refrigerant leak We had it checked a few times in the last few years and it never even needed a top off, we haven't had the freon checked since last summer however. - Is there a leak in your ductwork? I went up there and looked around and did not find anything egregious other tham mentioned in the original post. THere is that rusted area that concerns me. And the main unit was leaking quite a bit of air from the duct to the main unit, and I tried to use HVAC tape to stop it up.