I only have advice on drafty old houses, not on how much they cost to heat. My house actually is so old it doesn't even have a central heat system in it yet. We are putting one in during the renovation, but right now we are working with a freestanding coal stove, a lot like a wood stove except less work and much cheaper.

First, insulate everywhere you can and seal up cracks around doors and windows.

Second, heavy drapes! There is a reason old houses always had them.

Third, learn to dress in layers. As anyone who lives in an old house will tell you, there is no need to be wearing a tank top and shorts in Jan.

Fourth, think about a wood burning stove or something else of the sort. We were going to go wood, but ended up with a base burner coal stove. I love it (goes with our house better too). When our central heat system goes in, we will still be burning this in the coldest months of winter. I have many friends with big old houses and they all have wood stoves. You would be amazed at how much you can heat with just a little wood and how truly warm it is, not just tolerable.

Along with the woodburning stove idea, focus on creating one or two "warm" rooms. Keep the house at about 60 degrees, or 65 or whatever you can stand, and then one or two rooms at a higher, more comfortable temperature.

This is what my parents did when we lived in an 1888 Victorian. There was some insulation and storm windows from the 1950s. But it was a big house and cost a lot to heat through a New Hampshire winter.

So there was a space heater in the kitchen and a wood stove in the living room. The house was heated to 60 degrees during the day, 55 at night--enough so that pipes didn't freeze. And we all just wore sweaters and other layers. At night, down comforters and wool blankets and flannel sheets.

We had the old hot water radiators and they do a great job of heating up a room, but they are not as energy efficient as the hot water baseboard heaters, so if you already have those, that will help to save on the oil bill a lot.

Then in the summer, if you don't want to install the duct work for a whole house air conditioner, focus on creating a couple of "cool" rooms with window a/c units.

thanks to liriodendron , good stuff!

Everything liriodendron said!! We also heat with wood, no central heat here. (Aside from initial costs, very cheap=we scrounge our wood so it's free) For woodstove advice, visit Hearth.com, you will find a lot of general knowledge as well as other old home owners heating with wood. We use a portable ac unit when it gets REALLY hot. And no "e" in wavyglass.

I Live in Maine in a old farm house from 1742. We have a oil burner, but heat with a wood stove in one part of the house and have a propane stove in our living room. We have a pocket door so we can keep that room toasty warm. This year we are putting in a pellet stove.

Listen to Liriodendron, especially regarding moisture and ventilation, and air infiltration. The older it is, the more important this will be. Our old house is two hundred year old triple course brick. If cracks and leaks around doors and windows in the plaster are closed, the air pillow between the bricks make it surprisingly non-conductive to heat and cold even if brick is not considered a good insulator since it's the air channels between the courses doing the insulating. Also attic ventilation may have to be mofified and integrated if you ever change from something like a slate roof to shingles since slate and cedar shakes allows natural ventilation.

We just put the house's first central heating system in maybe ten years ago and also went with hot water heat, so that we did not compromise the interior with heat ducting. It's a wonderful and even heat. I made sure it was ZONED! so that keeping the rooms we used mostly could be heated without every room needing it. I find a natural gas grate in the most used areas plenty sufficient to use so that the boiler is not turned on too soon, or needing to crank the stats too high. We had an energy audit done and found our biggest culprits were air around window frames and fireplaces. That's not a hard fix. You will learn to open windows when cool and shut blinds when hot and live more naturally with the environment and find it is pleasant and not inefficient. We are NOT uncomfortable in winter or blistering in summer and we have eight rooms, a large house and have cut our energy bills IN HALF since installing the boiler and making other passive changes with landscaping and addition of a passive solar gain solarium where the back porch used to be.

Hi, We bought a 'new' Federal house near there last year. the first question is what is the house made of? Is it one of the old stonies that are so common in the area? The second is the oil furnace heat radiators or forced air? We pay a lot for the heat. The stonies have the advantage of being heat sinks, so the heat does not really go on until later in the day except on the coldest days. We are still in the process of insulating the house, but this type of house CAN NOT be insulated like modern wooden construction. You need to emphasize the insulation around the windows, doors and in the attic, but if you insulate the exterior walls you are buying yourself trouble. accourding ro our oil guy the average heat bill will be around $2400 for a winter for an average size house in the area. you might think about putting high velocity AC in later, but it is not that bad near there.

Hi Christine --

Four years ago I bought a 1923 foursquare with radiators and no AC, to renovate. My initial preference for providing AC was a ductless mini system, because they are super energy efficient. As it turns out, however, I would have had to have three separate compressors, one each for the first and second floor and the basement, half of which we made into a bedroom and bath.

I ended up going with a Spacepak high velocity system, which uses small-diameter flexible ducts that can be run between the walls and among joists of the second floor to cool the first floor.

The ductwork was installed when we had demolished the walls and reframed for a slightly altered layout. The coil assembly, which dehumidifies and vents the system, is in the shallow attic. The compressor is outdoors. The entire system cost 16k (I am in DC; PA may be less expensive).

It does an excellent job. Early on, there was a problem that the contractor had trouble diagnosing that ultimately turned out to be a manufacturing defect in the coil assembly, but once that diagnosed and fixed, I am very happy with the system.

For a studio apartment we developed in what had been a workshop in a separate building, I did go with a ductless mini system that both heats and cools. The indoor part of the system hangs just over the door, about half way between the floor and the cathedral ceiling. A reversible ceiling fan can help push the heat down and distribute the cool air even to the sleeping loft. That system seems also to work quite well.

Hope this info is not too complicated and that it helps. If the walls of the house you are buying are intact, I would definitely look first at the ductless mini system, which can be installed with the least making holes in walls. The system I installed in the studio is Mitsubishi Mr. Slim. On the home page of the link below, you can see on the wall what the indoor parts look like.

If you want to look into the high velocity systems, the two I know of are Spacepak and Unico. I was unable to find any objective info comparing them.

Cheers and good luck.

hbk

PS. For a 1905 farm house with radiator heat I am hoping to buy later this month, I am going to try to get proposals for both high velocity systems and ductless mini systems. The latter have fewer moving parts and need less servicing, I believe.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mistubishi Mr. Slim

Honor, how have the energy costs been for the split? We're looking into them for the cottage, so we'd have a heat source if we needed to go out of town during the winter to keep the place from freezing. We're also thinking about them in a rental we own that also has no central heat (gas DV stoves). Neither has room for ducting, no basements for furnaces.