Hello everyone. I'm currently renovating an addition that was made into an apartment before I purchased this house 18 years ago. Kids moved out, time to downsize, so I'm renovating to sell.

Location: Midtown Toronto. Reality: 3-4 months subzero (celcius) weather in the winter.

That said, there was some water damage from a window air conditioner and I needed to patch a wall. The drywall rot extends down behind an 30+ year old gas baseboard heater. I had another one on the downstairs of the apartment disconnected a couple years ago and expected to pull out the top one sooner or later anyway. They take up too much space and break down too often.

A few pictures to illustrate follow, then the main question.

The hole, the ancient baseboard heater...

The outdoor gas pipe & exhaust pipe...

The full apartment...

The two rooms (top/bottom) are about 10' x 10' in size. There is about an 8'x10' section where the kitchen and stairs are as well as a bathroom on the top floor (not visible from above picture). The bathroom is freshly renovated and the only portion of the renovation done (long story).

As mentioned earlier, this home is located in Toronto. Not truly northern weather, but ... we have at least 3 to 4 months of around 0 celcius temperatures with a few very cold days (up to -20 celcius). In the summer, we have about 6 weeks of terrible heat in this big tar / concrete frying pan of a city.

The main house is hydronic heating (gas boiler) and it's pretty comfortable ... but ductless and all that that implies.

I intended to get a 5 way heat pump installed in the spring and hoped it would be sufficient for most of the heating needs in the apartment except for the coldest nights where I would need to augment the heating somehow.

This leads me to my question ... what are my options given cost and resale are an important consideration to me.

My thoughts

1. I could just go with electric heating, but I'm sure that would be frowned upon by potential buyers as it would be pretty expensive during the cold 3 or 4 months.
2. I will have a heat pump, so maybe augmenting with portable electric heaters is enough, but again I fear it will drive away the fancy buyers looking at this neighborhood.
3. I could consider extending the piping from the main house hydronic boiler, but I'm not sure how close to capacity that boiler is (about 10 years old). Also, I'd have to trash the basement ceiling (not a big deal as it's a hanging ceiling without much headroom (followed some advice once that ended up being a bad decision).
4. Maybe partially 3, but using hydronic floor heating. The old carpet is coming out, so hardwood floors have yet to be installed.
5. Some clever person out there must have ideas that I don't even know are an option.

My other thoughts

I know nothing about this and my initial thoughts could all be ridiculous. I will hire in someone to do it all this work for me, but want to understand my options from an unbiased source before I begin. Also, the decision impacts the work I'm doing now and I need that apartment functional so I can live in it while the rest of the house gets gutted/tweaked/burned to the ground (yep, I'm getting frustrated).

A couple other things to consider ...

These rooms are small (again 10'x10') so a wall length baseboard takes up some pretty significant real estate.

Running pipes from the boiler (front of the main house) would involve ripping out the ceiling in the basement of the main house (another apartment) and the boiler may be at capacity already.

Any help / suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Mark.