How do you heat your home??

mckayleesmom wrote: Gas
Propane
Wood burning stove
Other???

Im just curious. Right now we have Gas, but we have had propane before and I HATED it. It was a big rip off.

Bee_Kay replied: natural gas w/ forced air furnace

aspenblue1 replied: gas

coasterqueen replied: We live in the country so we don't get to choose per se. Well I guess we could if we went with an electric heat pump, but we didn't have $10,000 to do that when we first started out.

Anyways, we heat our home with propane. Our fireplace is propane too, although DH wants to change it back to wood burning since we can do that.

Edit to say, yeah propane does suck because you pay about $300-$400 a month for propane PLUS the electric bill for the furnace.

mckayleesmom replied: When we lived in Minnesota...base board heaters were really popular too. I think those are so dangerous...I was always afraid my babies would put their fingers in there.

EvesMom replied: Baseboard heating. I rent, no other choice.

mckayleesmom replied:
We rented also..so we had no choice either....Are you ever afraid the kids might stick their fingers in there? Thats what scared me.

MyBlueEyedBabies replied: gas...or electric not really sure. I can tell you my stove is electric and my drier is gas but those are the only 2 i know about

MamaJAM replied: We have gas heat.....I really like it - MUCH cheaper than electric (IMO). Our last month in our old apartment (2 bedroom - and small) our electric heating bill was $250+......our first month in our (3 story - 3 bedroom) house with gas heat our bill was right around $100. We moved in Feb right after a blizzard...so the heat was being used plenty in both places.

jcc64 replied: Hot water baseboard with oil. Not sure what you're talking about with kids sticking their fingers in the radiators. While warm to the touch, they won't cause a burn. At least not the ones in my house.

mckayleesmom replied:
The ones Im talking about would...they burned up my sweater. We had one in the bathroom and I took a shower and by the time I got out my sweater was burned up...I accidentally put it to close. It was a new sweater too

coasterqueen replied:
W/Oil? Like oil heating? Sorry, I can be dense.

I just wonder because when we first were living in Ryan's grandpas house it had oil heating. It was AWFUL. It literally made you feel like your lungs were being cinged (sp?). Luckily we didn't have to deal with it too long and someone offered us an old furnace so we could use propane.

Maddie&EthansMom replied: Well, when we have to heat it (which isn't often ) We use gas

punkeemunkee'smom replied: We have electric heaters-don't have much use for them this year however!

punkeemunkee'smom replied:
We posted at the same time Great minds-

I was laughing to myself though-it was 68* when I got up in here and I turned on the heat to knock the chill out of the house!

Daisymom2 replied: Gas.... I'm broke....

C&K*s Mommie replied: electric.... but also here it has not been used much except in the morning after chilly nights, or at night when I am up by myself.

3xsthefun replied: We have electric heat. We have used wood before, but this year has been crazy & been busy. We will probably go back to using wood this fall.

5littleladies replied: Gas. Our bills this year have been outrageous!

jcc64 replied: Brianne- Clearly we don't have that kind of radiator- that sounds very dangerous. You can leave a piece of paper right on the pipes and it won't burn. I've never understood that, but I remember grilling the plumber about it when he installed it- I have a profound phobia of house fires. We installed this heating system, as we were told by dh's dr it was healthiest way to go. Dh and ds both have asthma and allergies, and it was the more expensive option- we wouldn't have done it if we didn't have to. Not sure what you're talking about with the smell of oil- Karen- been in many houses with oil/hot water baseboard, it's pretty common around here, and I've never noticed anything like that. Maybe they hadn't cleaned theirs' in awhile????

BAC'sMom replied: We have electric heaters

coasterqueen replied: Jeanne -

Maybe we aren't talking about the same oil heating. Ours was like a propane furnace, how it's run, with regular duct work, but you literally use OIL instead of propane. Nasty, thick black oil. It was awful!

I'm not sure how oil and water baseboard heat works. I'll have to have Ryan explain that to me.

amymom replied:
That's us too!!!

booey2 replied: Natural gas/forced air furnace. My cousin who lives in the country in Cambridge uses a wood burning stove to heat their farmhouse, when it gets really cold they use propane but try not to use it very often because of the cost of propane. Right now they are in Austraila so they are in the middle of summer and come home just as we head into spring so they have missed the winter season here and high heating bills. (this is the same cousin who I am very close to, the one with 5 kids, 11yrs old to 8 months and she homeschools and EBF all of them)

My2Beauties replied: Um I believe we use gas - the reason our bill is so freaking high this year

jcc64 replied: I think the way hot water baseboard works is that the furnace (fired by oil) heats a tank of water which then travels throughout the house through a series of pipes and coils. Because nothing is blowing, it supposedly keeps the air cleaner and less dusty, which is a good thing when your kid has a dust allergy.

fashionmumofboys replied: [QUOTE]natural gas w/ forced air furnace [CODE]

Same here.

MyLuvBugs replied: Electric furnas

But I grew up in a house with only a Wood burning Stove and a fireplace.

~Roo'sMama~ replied:
Baseboard heaters and radiators are different - baseboard heaters are these long electric heaters that run along the baseboard, and they are hot to touch and dangerous if you put anything too close to them. We had them in a few rooms of our house growing up, but my dad wouldn't let us use them because they were a fire hazard. I didn't know that people still used them! Radiators are a lot better.

To answer the question we have a gas furnace. I didn't really think it was very cheap, but I guess the $160- $200 we pay a month beats Karen's $300-$400 for propane!

Edit: Jeanne I thought you were talking about regular old radiators vs. electric baseboards. Sorry! I've never heard of the baseboards you have, but they sound a lot safer than the ones I've seen.

luvmykids replied: We have radiant floor heating, I love it. Since warm air rises, the floor is toasty and the air where your head is isn't so dry from hot air blowing. Bonus, it takes the chill off leather furniture, and even the ceramic tile in the bathrooms is waaay less "icy".

coasterqueen replied:
Yep, I think Ryan locked in our propane price at $1.29 a gallon and we get 200 to 300 gallons at a time. I *believe* we go through a tank a month, but don't quote me, it could be every two months. We also have to, in order to get a cheaper price for propane, lock in how many gallons we are going to use in a years time and then prepay like $700 up front. It sucks! But beats paying the real per gallon price. But to be correct we pay the $700 up front and then do a fixed payment every month. So we pay for our propane all year round and not $300-400 a month just in the winter months. We tried coming up with all that money up front and it didn't work. So we actually pay less than 300-400 a month, in reality but we pay for our propane ALL year round plus electricity. Not sure if that even makes sense.

Then we pay $100-$200 a month for electricity which includes our forced air furnace.

mckayleesmom replied:
Those are the ones Im talking about....they are really popular around Duluth and surrounding.

mom21kid2dogs replied: We heat with forced air gas. Very warm, fairly efficient. We have 100+ year old historic windows we won't part with so we expect to pay more. We have a gas vented fireplace in the new addition. It's really toasty, too.

My sister just built a 2500 sq ft house and my dad put geothermal heat in her house. It's awesome! Her total electric bill(her house is all electric) in December was $200 in NC Ohio~that's been our coldest month so far! She's like me & keeps her house at a toasty 73 degrees!

Sarah&Mackenzie replied: Through Nicor gas company That is how I feel about the prices!!

coasterqueen replied:
How cool! I will have to ask Dh about that. I wonder if it's like heat pumps?

I like to keep our house at 73 too. I didn't get my way til DH was away for 3 months in Louisiana. When he got back I told him there was NO way he was changing it and better get used to it.

jem0622 replied: Gas heat

mom21kid2dogs replied:
I was actually going to try to explain it, but this link does it way more justice than I could!!
http://www.geoexchange.org/about/how.htm

JMO, but this heat is FAR superior to an electric heat pump, especially in a colder climate. My parents & my brother both have electric heat pumps and their houses are freezing unless they use another heat source (my parents use wood, my brother a gas/wood fireplace). The air coming out of the register is downright cold if the air temp is under 20.

coasterqueen replied: Thanks Cheryl for the link. I will look it over and I sent it to Ryan as well.

Our heating guy talked us out of a heat pump because you still have to have a back up heat source like you mentioned. We believed him when we thought it wouldn't help our wallet out in the long run but have talked to many others in our area that said it would. Oh well, live and learn.

But this other source you mentioned sounds neat!

My3LilMonkeys replied: We have gas.