How much is your gas bill? (homes, utility costs, bills)

[Low Roller]

Originally Posted by wretched wrench

Yup. Around three times.

If you Google "Heating Fuel Comparison Calculator", a number of good sites will come up. They will all require adjusting to each person's prices and rate plan, but will give a general idea.

Thanks for that. I didn't realize there's such a discrepancy. Guess I'll stick with the gas.

[keninaz]

Yes you learn in time that natural gas is the cheaper form of energy over time.
I have owned many homes and had natural gas, propane and all electric homes and rentals over the years and I just prefer natural gas for my heating and cooking needs.

[wretched wrench]

A good site for calculating the costs of various fuels for heating is http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...LIIhE3dKbOcNpAif you have MS Excel.

However, the cost for electricity by KWH needs to be accurate. With APS, that means dividing your bill in dollars by the kwh usage. My result is different every month, and bears no resemblance to the stated rate on the APS rate charts.

The site will allow comparing your cost of natural gas heat, propane heat, wood and electric heat as long as you have efficiency figures for your heat sources. The electric part gets difficult, as it varies with time of day on most plans, and the stated rate by APS, even on the standard (non-time of day) plan, does not consider all the incredible add-on fees on their bill.

[Rogarven]

Has anybody here had experience with radiant floor heat? I had friends in ABQ that really liked it. I just wonder (1) the more expensive initial cost (2) the monthly rate for a system, (3) and the problems associated with the system. I sure like the idea of not having that forced air blowing all the time.
Thanks for responses. :-)

[BriansPerspective]

Originally Posted by Rogarven

Has anybody here had experience with radiant floor heat? I had friends in ABQ that really liked it. I just wonder (1) the more expensive initial cost (2) the monthly rate for a system, (3) and the problems associated with the system. I sure like the idea of not having that forced air blowing all the time.
Thanks for responses. :-)

The only place I've seen it is in bathrooms, where cold tile floors do not meld with bare feet. I would guess that retrofitting a house with radiant floor heat would be extremely expensive. Not only would you have to rip up all of your flooring to install it, you would have to rip through all of the walls to install the electric. Even in a new build, you would have lots of potential failure points throughout the house, since each room would presumably be on a seperate thermostat, wire, and breaker. Finally, since radiant floor heat is uncommon, you would have to convince a potential buyer that the system is reliable and cost-effective.

You may not like the blowing air, but in terms of resale, blowing air is the way to go. Radiant heat in a house is almost always a significant negative to buyers.

[wretched wrench]

Originally Posted by Rogarven

Has anybody here had experience with radiant floor heat?

When we had our house built, we considered it for the master bath. We have relatives in other states where they get a better rate from their power company for having electric heat. After calculating the efficiency and the real-life APS rates, we decided it was an expensive luxury. One of the factors against it was that the floor would be slow to heat, so it would have to be turned on most of the time in cold season or plan ahead and set a timer.

One aspect that weighed heavily against it was the constant approval by the Corporation Commission of rate and fee increases for APS.

But, it would certainly have been nice on cold mornings.

[Burning Madolf]

Originally Posted by Rogarven

Has anybody here had experience with radiant floor heat? I had friends in ABQ that really liked it. I just wonder (1) the more expensive initial cost (2) the monthly rate for a system, (3) and the problems associated with the system. I sure like the idea of not having that forced air blowing all the time.
Thanks for responses. :-)

That last house I owned in the NE had a new master bedroom wing with a big bedroom a huge bathroom and a walk through closet. The bathroom was radiant floor heat and it was awesome, especially like others have said waking up to toasty toes. The problem for me was the balancing of the system where two zones of heating (the bedroom and closet were one zone and the bathroom another) are kind of working together. We had to keep the bathroom warm all the time that we wanted to keep the bedroom warm. They were on separate zones but they seemed to work in conjunction. The cost however wasn't that bad if your overall boiler is efficient and the circulator pump is properly sized.

[Rogarven]

BM, the system you describe is what I was inquiring about. We have electric floor heat in our master bath which was installed when we did a total remodel. It IS nice in the winter. But that is a relatively small space and I don't think adds too much to the bill. The place in ABQ had the hot water in tubes that wound around the whole house. It was not a huge house but big enough for comfort. I wondered if you had problems, you would be having to dig up the tiles or saltillo to repair. That is what could be a pain.

[keninaz]

Originally Posted by Rogarven

Has anybody here had experience with radiant floor heat? I had friends in ABQ that really liked it. I just wonder (1) the more expensive initial cost (2) the monthly rate for a system, (3) and the problems associated with the system. I sure like the idea of not having that forced air blowing all the time.
Thanks for responses. :-)

If you are referring to the one that has the warm water flowing through it I don't think I would want one. My sister bought a used home that had it and came home one day to find that one of the pipe in the concrete as sprung a leak.
Quite a mess to clean up and quite an expense.
If a central forced air system is installed correctly by someone that knows what they are doing you may not even hear it operate.
Our duplex rental is very quiet with central forced AC/Heat.

[Burning Madolf]

Originally Posted by Rogarven

BM, the system you describe is what I was inquiring about. We have electric floor heat in our master bath which was installed when we did a total remodel. It IS nice in the winter. But that is a relatively small space and I don't think adds too much to the bill. The place in ABQ had the hot water in tubes that wound around the whole house. It was not a huge house but big enough for comfort. I wondered if you had problems, you would be having to dig up the tiles or saltillo to repair. That is what could be a pain.

There were check valves and pressure gauges between the circ pump and the floor being heated. We never had a problem i.e. I never saw water under the room, but I don't think we would have had to tear up the floor because we had sufficient underneath access via the basement.
I have seen older houses where the pipes are right in the slab and I imagine that could be costly if there were a problem.
Around Prescott it would probably be cheaper to make sure your house had the best possible insulation and if you didn't like the hot dry air blowing on you, look into having a humidifier installed.