What does your heating cost you?

[suzer]

There is always the question on here about to heat or not to heat and what to use, but we rarely talk about what our heating costs us aside from installation (in utilities), comparing one type to another.

 

We have a combustion heater, which is in our front room, at the front of the house, and we usually only use it nights and weekends, which means the house is cold in between, takes some time to heat up, and our entire house doesn't heat up as we have a pretty large house (4 bedrooms and an almost full basement).

 

Of course, this means we barely go over $200 a quarter in electricity bills (also have new heat pump water heater - electric as no gas hook up to the house).

 

I am considering getting some type of ducted heater in addition, once we have a few insulation measures in place (new windows, underfloor insulation for the rooms with hardwood floors). So many people say it's expensive to run one of these....but then lots of people have them too. Just curious - what do you pay to run one of these per quarter (electric or gas, small or large house)?

[Moosh]

We only have electricity, we have been paying $750 a quarter but hopefully once ETSA change over our meter after installing solar, we won't have any bills!

[suzer]

We only have electricity, we have been paying $750 a quarter but hopefully once ETSA change over our meter after installing solar, we won't have any bills!

 

Ouch - that's a lot. What kind of heating are you using?

[Tamara (Homes Down Under)]

The ducted reverse cycle inverter type systems are really good and can be cheap to run. They can heat an entire house within 10 minutes. However, for every 1 degree increase in temperature setting above 21 degrees you increase the bill by 10%. You could increase your bill by 70% if it's set on 28 degrees. There's always the possibility of a large bill if they are left on continuously and used like a central heating system.

I have gas in two houses and although cheaper to run it's difficult to get the heat in all the rooms. The lounge and living areas can get really warm but bedrooms can still be cold as there's no way to get the heat to circulate in there. Only the flu gas heaters are allowed in bedrooms (zero emissions).

if I was to start from scratch I would put in a plain evap aircon for summer (cheap to run) and a gas ducted heating system for winter.

 

Tamara

[suzer]

We have evaporative air conditioning and love it - massive improvement on nothing! And the gas ducted is what I was thinking of putting when we do get a gas hook up to the house.

[Moosh]

Ouch - that's a lot. What kind of heating are you using?

 

We use electric radiators and heated blankets.

 

With no gas up here and the previous owners installed evaporative air con, its pointless changing it over and putting another set of holes in the ceiling. Why didn't they think of heating??? Derr brains!

[Guest guest569]

We only have electricity, we have been paying $750 a quarter but hopefully once ETSA change over our meter after installing solar, we won't have any bills!

 

If your bills are $750 each time your solar will only reduce them and not delete them.( unless you have about 30 panels and a 5kw inverter )

[Moosh]

If your bills are $750 each time your solar will only reduce them and not delete them.( unless you have about 30 panels and a 5kw inverter )

 

We have 40 panels installed and a 3.8kW system. Will let you know if this is adequate when we get the first bill.

[Guest The Dimmocks]

At the moment we getting along fine with a few hot water bottles in beds before getting in and a few more layers of clothes. We havent got out our heaters yet :-). We in a rental with a thing on the wall that is meant to get warm but doesnt get warm enough to heat whole house so not point putting it on.

[suzer]

We use electric radiators and heated blankets.

 

With no gas up here and the previous owners installed evaporative air con, its pointless changing it over and putting another set of holes in the ceiling. Why didn't they think of heating??? Derr brains!

 

We have evaporative and I fully intend to put another set of holes in for heating - plenty of people do it.