average electricity cost Clark Fork (Sandpoint: real estate, how much, houses)

[Slater1]

I was trying to calculate anticipated electricity costs for Nov through March in Clark Fork. Can anyone put up some numbers for me?

The house that I am looking at shows a wood stove, but I don't know if it is the right size. Two story house, 2,160 sq ft, 4 bedrooms. There are some wall heaters. No gas or propane, so all electric. I have read that this town gets up to 60 inches of snow in the winter.

Thanks, folks.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

All electric is probably going to be pricey. It will help if that is a heat pump. Wood stove helps a lot if you have a cheap source of fire wood. Buying fire wood can be expensive and it is almost impossible to buy firewood that is dry enough to use.

My electric bill just arrived, $89, and I use gas for heat, hot water, and cooking, so none of that is on the electric bill. If you add heat and hot water to the electric bill, its going to jump that amount up substantially. Plus, it can add a lot to the bill if you are a big power user, lots of lights on, lots of electric devices, not careful about open doors, setting the heat high, that sort of thing.

I've lived in a 3,000 square ft home with a wood stove and the heat would never come on as long as I kept the wood stove loaded and burning. My son would buy a full truck load of logs and do all the cutting and splitting to keep the cost of the wood down.

You can probably get the power company to give you the billing and use history for the address, but that really means very little since different families use electricity very differently.

Check on Craigslist to see how much it will cost you to buy firewood. You can burn through a lot of wood when it is cold outside.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Adding this: weatherization makes a world of difference. A well insulated house with properly sealed windows and doors, costs a lot less to heat than a drafty house. That's something to be aware of if you are looking at older houses. Some are weather tight and some aren't.

[Slater1]

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

Adding this: weatherization makes a world of difference. A well insulated house with properly sealed windows and doors, costs a lot less to heat than a drafty house. That's something to be aware of if you are looking at older houses. Some are weather tight and some aren't.

The house was renovated down to the studs inside and outside, from what I was told by the seller's agent. New windows for sure. I thought the wood stove looked kind of small and might need a bigger one. I agree that all electric house will be pricey in the winter. There are electric wall heaters too.

[Clark Fork Fantast]

Sorry I can't help with information about electricity costs--we have a generator, and we're not full-time CF residents yet, anyway. But perhaps what I know about wood stoves can be of help. This is the one we have:
https://www.kumastoves.com/Store/Pro...ils/ashwood-le

Our cabin is approx. half the size of the place you're looking at, with a loft, and our stove heats up the entire place. The Ashwood stove may look small, but its heating capacity is tremendous, enough for a place more than twice the size of ours. Where I assume you would need the electric heaters is in the upstairs bedrooms. If you compare the dimensions of your stove and other specifications to the Ashwood stove on the Kuma website, you may get an idea of the capacity of the stove in your prospective place. Of course different manufacturers make different products.

[Slater1]

Thanks to everybody who gave a reply.

[Sandpointian]

Originally Posted by Slater1

I was trying to calculate anticipated electricity costs for Nov through March in Clark Fork. Can anyone put up some numbers for me?

The house that I am looking at shows a wood stove, but I don't know if it is the right size. Two story house, 2,160 sq ft, 4 bedrooms. There are some wall heaters. No gas or propane, so all electric. I have read that this town gets up to 60 inches of snow in the winter.

Thanks, folks.

electric: way too expensive for such a large house. I try to jack up gas usage so as to minimize demand for electricity.

[Slater1]

Originally Posted by Sandpointian

electric: way too expensive for such a large house. I try to jack up gas usage so as to minimize demand for electricity.

I don't see any gas connections. How do you get gas if the house isn't built for it? Thanks for your reply. I am beginning to think this house is too big and too high.

[Slater1]

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

All electric is probably going to be pricey. It will help if that is a heat pump. Wood stove helps a lot if you have a cheap source of fire wood. Buying fire wood can be expensive and it is almost impossible to buy firewood that is dry enough to use.

My electric bill just arrived, $89, and I use gas for heat, hot water, and cooking, so none of that is on the electric bill. If you add heat and hot water to the electric bill, its going to jump that amount up substantially. Plus, it can add a lot to the bill if you are a big power user, lots of lights on, lots of electric devices, not careful about open doors, setting the heat high, that sort of thing.

I've lived in a 3,000 square ft home with a wood stove and the heat would never come on as long as I kept the wood stove loaded and burning. My son would buy a full truck load of logs and do all the cutting and splitting to keep the cost of the wood down.

You can probably get the power company to give you the billing and use history for the address, but that really means very little since different families use electricity very differently.

Check on Craigslist to see how much it will cost you to buy firewood. You can burn through a lot of wood when it is cold outside.

I just looked up "heat pump." It looks like what we call the A/C condenser outside the house and will cost a few thousand dollars. Without taking the time to research this system, can you tell me what changes need to be made construction-wise for the house? I don't see any air ducts in the house, so there would be work done to install that too, right? Thanks for taking the time to help reduce my research. I don't have much time. I wish real estate agents would be more helpful in terms of warning before the fact rather than after.

[nm9stheham]

What you call an A/C condenser is essentially identical to a heat pump. An heat pump is modified with reversing valves so the unit can serve to coll in the summer and heat in the winter.

Heat pumps are 3 to 4 times more efficient than direct electric heat. They basically use electricity to move heat into a house (heating mode) or out of a house (cooling mode) than directly convert electricity to heat. That is why they are so much more efficient.

The big plus is that you have AC and heat.

There are limitations however. When in heating mode the outside unit's coils get quite cold. If there is moisture in the air, this freezes up the outside coil and energy is used to thaw it out. At some point, is is just not workable anymore. In dry air, they can put heat into a house to as low as 10F outside. But if it is a damp cold, then it will struggle to move heat at any lower than 35-40F.

Because of this lower heat limit, all heat pumps systems need a heat back up system. The basic way is to have electric heating coils within the inside heat exchanger, that kick in when the heat pump cannot work. A better way is to marry a gas, LP, or propane furnace with the inside heat exchanger. This is the more efficient heat when temps get too cold for the heat pump to work.

Heat pumps can move a lot of air inside to move a lower amount of heat, so the heated air can feel cool. The better, high efficiency ones have multi-speed fans indoors so that when the heat pump is putting out low heat amounts, the air flow is lowered so that the blowing air does not feel too cold. And the best have multi-speed compressors to keep the efficiency maximized.

We've had the combined heat pump with LP backup for 30 years. It is set to kick to LP heat whenever temps drop below 35F. In that way, it heats via heat pump in spring and fall and warmer winter days, but when it gets cold, or cold and damp, the LP kicks in and we get nice warm blown heat.

As I am sure you have figured out by now, you indeed need ductwork installed in the house for this, like for whole house AC. Does this house a basement, or a crawl space, or is it in a slab? Retrofit of ductwork in a basement can be lot easier and you just heat up the basement and the 1st floor, and use the electric baseboard heaters as backups on the 2nd floor. A crawl space is doable with the same strategy. A slab is the worst, as you can only rip into the ceiling of the 1st floor... I would not even try, but there may some clever way to do it.