Sacramento vs. Salem (building, furnaces, photos)

[Silverfall]

Originally Posted by Radio Flyer

Central Heating/Air would be my ultimate luxury, even here in the northeast. Most homes here have baseboard heating, so I'm used to it, though I still get frustrated with them when it comes to furniture placement....Concerning air conditioning, I've heard the portable room-to-room units aren't very good. We have a couple of bulky window units. They're okay, but are a royal pain in the butt to move in and out of the windows. Better than nothing when it gets super humid though.

In No Cal., we had electric, which would be unheard of here. The majority of New England homes use oil and a lot of folks have woodstoves too. They help with costs and if the power goes out for an extended period of time, they can be life-savers.

I look at a lot of online real estate listings and see a fair amount of woodstoves in Oregon and Sacramento. It's hard for me to imagine needing a woodstove in Sac. I don't know if they're for looks or if they actually need them there. I see fire pits in the back yards too. Same thought, REALLY?!... in Sacramento?

What is the most common form of heating in the Willamette Valley? Also, how much on average are your monthly heating/cooling bills? I know the size of individual homes will vary, as will the bills. That's fine. I'll take any info. I can get...Also, when you're buying a home, is it common to ask to see the utility bills? ( It's fairly common here.)

Most people have gas furnaces here for heat although heat pumps are also common with a furnace backup.

I'd say for a 2000 sq foot house you'd be looking at about 150 a month in a gas bill in the winter. Then you would have electricity for the blower.

Oregon doesn't get super humid in the summer. I've been in the central valley in CA in the summer and it is insanely hot. I don't think it is anything like Oregon.

[Radio Flyer]

Sounds good. Three years ago, we had a brutally cold winter and oil prices were sky-high. We paid over $3,000 for oil that year...This was in addition to our electric bill.

[CAjerseychick]

Actually yes there's a fair amount of wood stoves here ( Portland, SE) especially in these neighborhoods with the WWII generation... My neighbors son has a side business selling cords of wood in the wintertime ( from his land in the country)...

[Yankeemama]

Originally Posted by Radio Flyer

Sounds good. Three years ago, we had a brutally cold winter and oil prices were sky-high. We paid over $3,000 for oil that year...This was in addition to our electric bill.

Sounds like a Maine winter's heating bill. My cousin spent a few seasons in So. Maine, including winter, and she spent more than she expected to heat a small house.

[Silverfall]

Originally Posted by Radio Flyer

Sounds good. Three years ago, we had a brutally cold winter and oil prices were sky-high. We paid over $3,000 for oil that year...This was in addition to our electric bill.

I've had one client with oil heat and she spent $1600 a year on it.

[Hawk J]

When i was a young'un, we lived in Milwaukee WI, while my dad was off fighting a war. Sometimes we played down in the basement, where they dumped a mountain of coal, down a chute, for heating fuel to be used in the furnace...

[C24L]

I would vote for Sacremento

[Nell Plotts]

Originally Posted by Hawk J

When i was a young'un, we lived in Milwaukee WI, while my dad was off fighting a war. Sometimes we played down in the basement, where they dumped a mountain of coal, down a chute, for heating fuel to be used in the furnace...

I will do you one better, I grew up in a house in Portland heated by a sawdust burner.

[Radio Flyer]

Hawk, that sounds filthy. Not a big concern when you're a kid, I guess.

I've never heard of a sawdust burner...Did it heat the whole house, Nell? Sounds kind of similar to the current day pellet stoves.

[pdxMIKEpdx]

Originally Posted by Nell Plotts

I will do you one better, I grew up in a house in Portland heated by a sawdust burner.

So did I.

Always scared of the big octopus in the basement when I was a little kid.

It kind of looked like this: