what do you use?

[Silver_civic]

Hello there everyone, and what does everyone here on BITOG use to heat their home and garage/shop? My apartment is a 90 something old brick house, and it has radiators/hot water heat from a natural gas boiler. Brother in Harrisburg has a heat pump in his house, no heat in his small garage. Real father uses a HITZER coal stove and barrel stove that burns anything but coal in his large garage. Let me hear what you folks use.


adam vasbinder

 

[dsmdriver2588]

For my heater in my home, its centralized electric

 

[duaneb9729]

I use a combination of several pieces of equipment to heat my home.

We have a 95% 2 stage variable speed blower furnace, with a 2 stage heat pump. All of this is controlled by a three zone control panel.

We also heat the tile floors in our house with a "combicore" boiler/hot water heater and that system is zoned as well.

 

[JHZR2]

I just went through this. I have hot water/cast iron radiators, and we just bought an ultra-high efficiency Peerless Purefire boiler. It is >95% efficient.

Feeds the house through one zone and the indirect water heater through another. The indirect water heater has no real standby losses the way that a regular combusting water heater, as there is no chimney/stack. Working pretty great it seems. Some learning curve but still great.

 

[Silver_civic]

Very interesting duaneb! It gets real cold in your neck of the woods! Was 3 degrees this morning at 7a.m.

adam

 

[Boomer]

Have a geothermal heating/cooling/domestic hot water system . Heating/cooling takes the output of the geothermal compressor and runs a forced air system. Garage is uinheated.

 

[Silver_civic]

Yeah JHZR2 I did see the pics of your new heating system. Looks great and should be better on fuel bills I would think. I dont pay any utilities in my apartment, and the house is drafty in the attic and some areas. Landlord below me doesnt want to fix anything so I will let her pay the utilities. I should say, all I pay for is my cable bill and cell phone and thats all.

 

[simple_gifts]

#2 (oil that is) FHA and K1 Toyoset as emergency backup and supplemental.

 

[duaneb9729]

Originally Posted By: Boomer
Have a geothermal heating/cooling/domestic hot water system . Heating/cooling takes the output of the geothermal compressor and runs a forced air system. Garage is uinheated.



If we would have had more room on our lot, I live in the heart of Minneapolis, I would have put in a geothermal system, with vertical wells.

Boomer how was your tubing installed?

 

[TurboLuver]

Home uses a 2 stage heat pump.
Garage, I have a 170,000 btu Reddy Heater.

 

[mongo161]

I have natural gas heat used to heat the boiler which sends hot water to huge cast iron radiators throughout the house.

Glad I picked up these huge cast iron radiators many years ago when people were getting rid of them for "modern" renovations on their homes....now they cost a fortune to buy.

Warm and toasty with lots of insulation and double glass storm windows.

 

[lewdwig]

I have a geothermal system in my house with horizontal loops (closed system). A propane heater for the garage (only used when working in the garage).

 

[Pablo]

Wow - more geothermal than I would have thought.

We have central heating via natural gas. We have some localized electric heaters as well.

I heat my shop with a variety of quartz lights, portable electric heaters with fans and parabolic heaters, one oscillates.

 

[eljefino]

Weissman 94.5% efficient #2 fuel oil boiler (missed that .5% on tax time when there was a rebate for 95%+ efficient stuff) doing hot water through baseboards, a Vermont Castings Vigilant woodstove taking a lot of the load off, a huge kitchen woodstove that sees rare use. Wood is "whatever the guy has" but more oak than birch. Some ash.

Garage sees electric space heaters and a yet-unopened ventless kerosene CO maker.

 

[Spazdog]

My shop has a Dearborn type heater in the waiting room, oil filled electric in the office, and kerosene forced air in the garage.

Yeah, the building is old. Kennedy era. It's made of reinforced concrete 8" thick. If you stay away from the overhead doors you should be fine in a tornado.

It does have two forced air natural gas heaters hanging from the ceiling in the garage. The gas has been shut off for them. With the bay doors open they ran continously and offered no heat. Just burning money and dumping it out the turbine vent on the roof and/or the overhead doors.

 

[Al]

Still use resistance heat..but its usually not on. Our 3 bedrooms are unheated and propane inour family room heats most of the house. We have a 500 gal tank so I am literally independent from the outside world if need be for the winter.

 

[opus1]

Forced air heated by natural gas.

When I built the house, I paid extra to have additional insulation blown into the attic (to R-38 I think, I'd need to check).

 

[gfh77665]

Originally Posted By: Silver_civic
Let me hear what you folks use.


Well, we have a natural gas central heater, but almost never need use it.

 

[LS2JSTS]

Originally Posted By: Pablo
Wow - more geothermal than I would have thought.



Agreed, I'm impressed, some forward thinking in here. Also like the high efficiency boiler systems.

My last house, now sold, was a super efficient structural insulated panel home, I had geo thermal with air/air heat exchangers/interchangers. My utility bills were very small compared to similar size homes. The upfront cost is a killer, but the return is nice to see every month.

The place I'm in now, is very small and I heat mostly with a soapstone woodstove, but also have a propane tank with a blue flame heater for emergencies.

 

[HTSS_TR]

We have forced air natural gas central heater, it had been off for 2-3 weeks, because the weather got warmer since end of Dec up to mid to high 70's during the day and no lower than high 40's at night.