Mini Splits have been around for years++. What U hear about them are how incompetent installers install them. Try www.mitsubishicomfort.com/ the best ..they have some very good systems. Make sure you talk to a mitsubishi rep. not a hvac contractor first. asked the rep to refer U to one of there best contractors...thats the best way to "get it right" These are pricey products. But excellent. They have systems that have one outdoor sections and upto 8 indoor coils. As far as heating with hot air into one room this is not a solution. As far as concrete floors...thats what is horrible! I just finished redoing a floor. Replaced the entire house with Platon, and hardwood.

To get a true electric rate, you need to calculate in all the surcharges and adjustments on the bill which can be substantial. If you have a bill from that company, just divide $/kWh and use that figure. Maybe they have a sample bill on their web site that would allow the same thing. Is nat gas available where you live? What kind of shape is the boiler and tank in? The Hudson Valley covers a surprisingly large climate range or is Hudson Valley the name of a burg? No matter, Mike_home's statement about the need for calculations is correct. (Maybe crazy) idea for the pros here, but could the oil boiler be kept used for backup heat with a coil for the forced air? It might be worth considering for three reasons, first, cost could be favorable to electric strips, second, heat could be powered by a small generator in case of outage, third, you could use the oil of domestic hot water if gas is not available.

I am loosing my mind or someone deleted my statement that I live on the (South) Gulf Coast! That is a very important part of many of my comments on house issues. It is obviously very hot and humid here. Your BC situation is so very different so I can't really speak the practical side of your heating issues. No, I did not install it myself. I got a guy that's been teaching at the local trade school forever as far as the local installers go. He did not have much experience with minisplits and called in a collaborator for the job. They did a really nice job running the tubes and electrical through interior walls. The house is raised over an open crawl space so I don't have anything but the outdoor units visible outside. Now I have three whereas before I had two conventional two-ton compressors, one AH, with a gas furnace in the attic. I mostly looked into Sanyo, Toshiba and Mitsubishi. They all have advantages and disadvantages wrt operating features. I do not know your climate so my main concern would be low temp heating performance. Here if you have enough cooling in a heat pump, you can not really run out of heat. One thing I have noticed, but don't understand is that the single minisplits are more efficient and better at low temp than the multi systems. There has to be an engineering explanation or they are just a year or two ahead with the single systems and the designs will trickle over with a delay. Overall, we really like the system. It fits our lifestyle. We are out a lot, and the house has its original doors and walls intact. The inherent zoning feature should save us a lot of money over the years since we will have less expense for conditioning of rooms that are not occupied at different parts of the day and night. My systems are mounted high on the walls. It was very cold for my area when we went into operation so it got a good test. One thing that I noticed is that the programming could be better for heating. The inside blowers go to slow mode when the temp approaches the set point. This makes them good ceiling heaters. (That seems pretty predictable. I've lived in homes in predominantly cooling climates with both supply and return located in the ceilings.) Bumping up the blower speed manually solved the problem. I suppose that the ceiling fan might have done the same thing. One thing I am very glad that I did was to change the first plan to put the units at the head of the beds in a couple of rooms. I was actually concerned that the cool air would cascade down on heads at low blower speed. That might have been a problem, but it would have been even more annoying to have hot air on the face in the "winter". Keep in mind that you can mix and match. If I had not gone entirely with minisplits, I would have had a regular forced-air system and installed one mini in the rear utility room. The duct to that area originated in the attic, ran vertically down a chase through the house and under 2/3 the length of the house to three registers in the floor in that room. It was a weak point to keep in a main system. The expense of mixing systems like that might depend on how capacity breaks down in choosing a "main". Finding a good installer who is experienced with minisplits might be difficult.

That 11.2 cents per kw-hr is only your generation price from BGE. Transmission and distribution are about another 4 cents/kw-hr. MD has high electric rates since de-regulation a few years ago (I live in Harford County). I wouldn't install a heat pump in your case. Natural gas prices are really cheap this winter. Supply is up and demand is down from a weak economy. Take care.