Heating oil for hot water through cast iron radiators.

geothermal heating and cooling and wood stove

Same as Ravencajun... gas heat and electric central air. Getting ready for a MAJOR down-sizing, so, hopefully, AC bills for this summer will NOT raise my BP!!

Wasn't that long ago that I was HOT all the time... one of those "things" that happens, iykwim. Now just a 2 degree difference in temp has me COLD in winter and roasting in summer??

Gas heat, plus a few of those oil filled electric room heaters just in case. Electric blanket.

Window AC for cooling

Heat pump, all electric. Works great as long as it's not cold. :(

Natural gas-fueled furnace, but I've never turned it on.

All electric. We just upgraded our entire HVAC system. We should see a significant difference this summer. The BIG thing is a tax credit of $300. New windows and front door changes also gives a tax credit of $500.

Gas heat and electric Ac central unit. My heater is brand new. I hope to get a rebate from ONG Oklahoma Natural Gas. The old furnace here was ancient looking.

Moni

Our HVAC is new as well. What we had was pretty old, and had pinholes where the coolant was escaping. Tobey just went to Lowes and got a whole new unit. We have a wood stove (furnace) in the basement, and it can REALLY heat the house In a hurry.

Kerosene furnace..3bedroom, LR, DR, Kitchen, 2 baths, laundry room. We are so well insulated it costs us about 40 dollars a month for heat in Pa a cold state. But I prefer electric.

Our furnace runs on heating oil. The oil tank is in our basement. 250 gallons. Everything else is electric. There are no natural gas lines in our area. Furnace man says we're one of the few homes in the area who still heat with oil. He's suggesting switching to propane. I've done no research but propane (and natural gas) scares me. Always on the news - someone's house explodes and darned if it isn't a gas leak. Always.

And I hate the look of those propane bombs (tanks). Not looking forward to making the switch.

We're in Minnesota and heating oil has kept us cozy in this house since 1976.

Kessala

Gas heat that we supplement with electric heaters. If we lose power we have some propane heaters and lanterns for light.

Central forced air, 125,000 btu/hr gas burners, central air cooling.

The bonnet efficiency of the gas furnace (41 yr old) is about 65% to 70%, but very reliable - no electronics; mercury switch thermostat. Only maintenance on the thermostat is to clean the dust out once a year. The air conditioner's compressor is 240 Vac, 22 yrs old. There has been no maintenance required on the A/C unit.

Oil-fired hot air, which heats the house in the morning and occasionally kicks on during the night. But if I'm not going out during the day most of the time I heat with my wood stove.

I used to keep the stove going all night, but the past couple of years I've been letting the fire die down at bedtime.

Also, the deal I have with my electricity supplier gives me free electricity from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., so I sometimes run electric (oil-filled) radiators during that period.

Heat Pump - 2-3 years old, does a good job, even when it's really cold. We have propane gas logs in fireplace which we used for aux. heat when power went out before we got a whole house generator.

Comparative Analysis of Home Heating Systems

This report was prepared for the Propane Council and may be slanted toward their product, However, it has much useful data and demonstrates methods of comparisons including first cost of an installation.

http://hwaxis.com/usepropane/Heating_Systems_Analysis_2010.pdf

Gas furnaces scare the bejeebers out of me. We have a friend in Moncton New Brunswick whose entire house blew up and left only a few shards of glass and splinters, Their home was splattered all over the neighborhood . Thank Goodness they were not at home, so nobody got hurt or killed Sure messed up the homes close by though.

[In the table below, please excuse my inability to align the numbers properly. This web site strips out extra spaces that was used to position the numbers.]

The vapor pressure of propane (and other heating gases) drops with temperature. The pressure of some bottled fuels can drop too low for furnace use in extreme cold and may require a heater in the fuel tank.

The curves below are for propane C3H8.

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/propane-vapor-pressure-d_1020.html

This is the absolute pressure of the gas. To find the pressure above atmosphere, subtract 14.7 psi. This is the pressure available to drive the gas against atmospheric pressure to deliver the gas to an appliance. Reading from the last curve, we get:

Temp,F Absolute Pressure, psi Gage Pressure, psi

0 40 26.3

-25 23 8.3

This is the pressure available with the system at rest. When the furnace kicks in and begins to draw gas from the tank, the tank temperature (and pressure) will drop some more due the evaporation of the gas from a fluid to gas. The result is in extreme cold, the furnace may become fuel starved. Extreme cold, fuel type, and system features should be considered as well as fuel cost and availability. This is more critical in places where winter temperature has the potential to drop to -25 F and below.

Different bottled gases have different temperature-pressure curves.

Natural gas, forced air heat; electric central air. Sunporch has hard wired ( with thermostat) electric baseboard. I have a zoned system: separate HVAC for first and second floors.

Electric heat pump, wood burning fireplace as an aesthetic and emergency heat.

Natural gas, radiant in the ceilings for most of my 3000 sq ft house. The master bedroom/bath at the far end are electric. The garage (opposite end) is electric too but we rarely have reason to run heat out there. This is cozy and comfortable, but I miss the heat pump from my former house mostly for the whole house air cleaner. I rarely had to dust, and while this home is much nicer, here I dust.

We are converting to hydronic radiant floor heating. Big job but will be so worth it. For cooling we will use a mini split system in a couple of rooms. In fact that is on the list before summer hits. It doesn't get that hot here for us to require whole house AC. Nanny state has destroyed the ability for us to enjoy our wood burning fireplace so we will switch to a gas insert with fans to warm the living room.

We had/have electric radiant heat in the ceiling! as a backup but use a pellet stove insert in the fireplace for most of the heating. Warmest it has ever been and less costs, too. Love it and would never go back to just electric.

Our house is 2,300 square feet (994 sq.ft. upstairs, 1,306 sq.ft. downstairs). There are 4 bedrooms, 3 full bathrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, breakfast nook, family room, and laundry room. Wood burning fire places (both with gas lighters) in the family room and master bedroom. Just like Texas_Gem, the gas in the fireplaces is only on long enough to ignite the wood. Here in Sacramento County, there is a "Spare the Air" program, and starting on November 1 through the end of February each year, you have to check to see if it's legal to burn "any solid fuel, including wood, pellets or manufactured logs when particulate matter pollution is forecast to be high. This applies to indoor or outdoor fireplaces, wood stoves, firepits and chimineas."

We have natural gas, forced air central heat. We have electric central air. We only occasionally use the fireplaces for heat. They're mostly for ambiance. :-)

Gas furnace. It's the bomb. Doesn't use much gas at all. Wish my AC was as cost effective to run.

Gas furnace for me too. Fireplace now and then for coziness.

Electric heaters in each room. No AC here, Newfoundland rarely gets hot enough to use it. We have a small air conditioner in our bedroom window for the 2 or 3 weeks in the summer we need it.

Natural gas fired forced hot air furnace in basement, window unit AC.

Originally had a wood burning furnace for 15 years or so, when it failed natural gas came to the neighborhood so went that route. Unit has been care-free for 15 years, probably just jinxed myself!

I grew up with a 'convection' coal furnace. We had a beast of a stove in the kitchen, it used gas for the eyes and 'range oil' for a side heater. My dad switched to gas in time.

Natural gas forced air furnace, whole house electric air conditioning. House was new 17 years ago and furnace and air conditioner were working fine, but dh replaced both with new higher efficient units last spring.

Am I seriously the only one with an outside wood boiler? I LOVE it, no mess in my house & very safe since the fire is outside, not in our home.

Gas furnace. Only 18 months old. :) My last furnace needed to be replaced over 20 years ago. We managed to get it going until not quite 2 years ago. Then used a space heater for a week or so (thank goodness it was Spring and we didn't get too cold). My nephews are sheet metal workers and work on high rises but are allowed to install home furnaces. They did it for me for the cost of the parts alone! Saved me a bundle of $$.

Electric heat pump for heat/air. Gas logs in the fireplace. Electric is pretty cheap here in the SE where we live.

In our house in Mass we had Oil run hot water baseboard heat. When oil got so high we had a giant pellet stove installed outside that holds a ton of pellets at a time. It has large pipes that sends hot water to our baseboard heat instead of the oil furnace doing it. It runs our hot water in the winter as well. Pellets are cheaper than oil. With the pipes running under the floor and at the ceiling of the basement our floors stay warm and it also keeps the basement nice and warm as well.

This system kept a 3000sq ft house plus the basement nice and warm. We could adjust the temperature through our thermostat just like a regular furnace. The only down side was in spring before we were ready to shut the stove down for the year the house would still stay pretty warm even with the temperature set low because hot water was still circulating under the floor. It wasn't something we couldn't fix by opening a window though.

Our oil bill was around $300-$500 every month and a half depending on the cost of oil. Once we went to pellets it dropped our monthly heating down to $100-$200 every month and a half.

Natural gas heating and electric for AC and a natural gas fireplace which we hardly ever use at one house. We have oil hot water at the river house which we don't use anymore because of the expense. Now we depend on mini splits for heating and cooling. We also have propane fireplaces which we love.

Heat pump. Gas here is $35/mo for the luxury of having it availible, PLUS whatever you pay for it- electric comes out cheaper! We only use it perhaps 2mo out of the year, and not every day then.

Old house had heat-pump only, it never felt like warm air came out of those registers. Current (older, smaller) house has city gas forced-air furnace, with a regular heat pump for a/c in the summer. It's wonderful waking up to a warm house! And because the square footage is so much less, our heating and cooling bills are much lower than they used to be.

Gas furnace. It's the bomb

Wow Scott, could you maybe used another word other than BOMB ? LOL

Gas and open windows is the AC.

Central heat and air, heat and hot water heater is gas, everything else is electric.

Rusty

For an old house, this house is easy to heat. There is a big sun porch that is the length and the width of the house. Think L with the sun porch bring an L inside that. It helps warm the house in winter and cool it in summer. The rooms we aren't using are closed off. When we added the sun porch. that created a center hall, which pulls a breeze through the house, in summer. We only have an electric heater in the bedroom that I turn on for a little bit when I get up in the morning. There is a window ac in the bedroom, but I use a fan all the time. I'd like to have a fireplace in the living room. We are going to put a wood burning stove in the sun porch, which we will use more like a den.

We live in a rental apartment, where the heat is included in the rent. It's gas, baseboards. They installed a very high-efficient gas furnace that's compact and hangs on the wall a few years ago.

It's very easy/inexpensive to heat. The windows and patio door have all been replaced and are airtight. With windows on all sides, it's very bright and sunny.

We built 2900 sq ft North of Chicago in 2001. Our unfinished basement is home to our natural gas fired forced air furnaces with electric central air. Ducting has flow-through humidifiers and Aprilaire air cleaners. MBA has in-floor electric heat. North-facing library with tall north-facing window and cathedral ceiling and was cold; contractor added hydronic tubing under that room and in the back hall -- the water heated by a tiny gas-fired boiler in the basement. LOVE that hydronic heat! Each room has two air return ducts: high for summer; low for winter.

Last year pulled out the through-the-wall air conditioners at the Maui condo and put in two mini-split systems. These are whisper-quiet, and our electric bills have been halved.

Burning wood to heat homes is as inefficient and poisonous as burning coal was in the UK. I have mild asthma. I'd have died young in the legendary London 'fogs'.

Our house is 3,400 sq ft. A/C & water heater is electric. The house has a mennonite wood furnace in the garage. It is hooked up to the duct work & thermostat. We keep the house at 70 deg. We get at least 14-16 hr. fires on one fill up. It is a lot of work getting wood & splitting it but well worth the savings.

jemdandy, I hope you get that 41 year old furnace inspected periodically. What goes wrong with a hot air furnace is that heat exchangers ultimately crack or develop holes. When that happens, carbon monoxide is released into the house with the warm air. At 41 years, you've gotten more than your money's worth. Getting something more efficient will pay for itself with piece of mind and cheaper operating costs. Furnaces with such a low efficiency as the antique you have aren't sold anymore.

I'm really surprised to hear of how many of you burn wood for heat. It's a lot of work and not very good for the environment. And, as others have mentioned, not very good for human health with the nasty stuff that gets released into the air for others to breath. Yes, watchme, the nanny state. I remember many winter night times in the South Bay when the air was so acrid from wood burning that lungs and eyes would burn. Thank goodness for Spare the Air monitoring and federal EPA rules for new wood burning stoves. It's too bad old equipment is grandfathered.

PS - properly maintained and inspected natural gas furnaces are MUCH safer to use as a heating source than wood burning devices. If you live in a wood burning area and know a fireman, ask him how frequently they respond to chimney and vent fires from wood burning stoves and inserts. The answer may shock you, it's pretty common.

Propane is a little less safe than natural gas and is much more prone to explosion because it's heaver than air.

Same as the OP, heat pump and wood stove. Prefer wood stove as it can get to 80° in the lower level easily. If we're using the heat pump, it's only 70°. House is all electric so if the power goes off, we're warm and can cook.

High humidity 90°F summers, potential down to 10°F (or even 5°F) winter: we have heat pump upstairs for heat and cool, and propane heat with AC downstairs. Propane water heater. We have a 7000 watt electric generator for power outages; the common small generator is 5000 watts.

One nice feature of having two AC units is that each is smaller than having only one unit. The 7000 watt generator can START and run one of those smaller units that would likely be impossible without a far more expensive whole house generator. OTOH, many people notice the lack of a heat blast when a heat pump is in heating mode because heat is likely coming in at 85°F or cooler. Being less than body temp makes it appear to be cooling if the air is directed on you.

I appreciate the efficiency of the heat pump. Unfortunately, I had to get a new one after 15 years; I expected a much longer life. The HVAC people pointed out that heat pumps run twice as much as individual heaters or AC units.

Our wood burning boiler is outside. I live way deep in the woods on 27 acres so nobody around us is bothered by the smoke. Most Mainers burn wood for warmth, it's most practical here :)

Natural gas forced air furnace, electric central air. Our last house had an air-source heat pump with electric heat backup. I froze my @ss in that house. I love my natural gas!

Natural gas boiler for hot water heat and a gas hot water heater. We have window AC's for the summer. I would love to eventually add minisplits to the whole house! Btw I love our heat, house is always warm and comfortable.