Originally posted on 2018-09-05
One of the many challenges we are facing with this property is how to heat it all winter long. We have been told that the previous occupant did stay all year round, and there is plenty of evidence of that.
So what’s the challenge? We have the kitchen / dining room area that appears to be heated by a wood burning fireplace and one wall heater powered by propane. Other than that, the rest of the place is electric baseboard heat.
Problem one: Electric heat is really expensive. We don’t know what the previous occupant paid in hydro over the winter months, but I can almost guarantee it was more than we want to pay. Not to mention that it doesn’t circulate the air well, and may not work properly if it’s dusty. Not ideal when we plan to a lot of work inside this winter.
Problem two: The other sources of heat only heat one room, and don’t do anything to help prevent the pipes from freezing. Since turning off the water for the winter is not feasible if we are going to live in the house we need a heat source that can keep the pipes from bursting. The possible solutions we’ve investigated thus far:
One: We convert the building to forced air propane. Probably not feasible with this property, as we would need to install all the duct work and the crawl space under the house is just too small. We had someone here to look at it, and he pretty much spent the entire time we were talking about this option shaking his head.
Two: Add a second fireplace to the other end. Not a great solution either. First, if we put another wood burning one in we have to always have wood burning. It would mean we would have to be onsite all winter long, as you don’t want wood burning when you’re not home & it has a high probability of running out, thus not preventing our pipes from freezing. So we asked about converting the one we have to propane and getting a second propane one. We are checking with our insurance broker, but we were told by the salesperson that insurance companies won’t allow for this to be our primary source of heat. If that turns out to be accurate, that kills this idea.
Third: Add more wall heaters. This is the simplest idea that we’ve explored so far. We already have this one propane wall heater and we could simply add more. The problem with this solution is that these protrude pretty far out, and are ugly. Not to mention that you can’t put anything on them when they’re on, and we have a child in the house that may not realize that despite us repeatedly telling her. So for now, we are going to continue to explore options. Worse case, we may end up with some high hydro bills for the first winter. Stay tuned to see what we do.
Huron The Lake 