Best way to heat finished basement

[4cefed4]

I live in your area and just went through this same process. We have a good size ranch with a full basement with a walk-out on the rear of the house. For a ductless mini-split we were looking at an 18k BTU for the main area, and 9k BTU for each of two side rooms. The cost of a system this size was ranging between $8000-12,000 depending how neat we wanted the installation, and at the end of the day even the "neat" version wasn't up to our aesthetic standards. You need to be honest with yourself about how often you are really going to be using this space. If someone is going to be living down there or you have have children who spend every waking moment in the basement, this kind of investment may make sense. For us, the low initial cost of electric baseboard or in-wall convection heaters and high running cost were a much better compromise for how often we'd realistically be using them. The time to heat up the space is increased a lot, so some planning/timers may be necessary, but it was an easy choice for us. We also had two HVAC installers look into tapping into the forced air heat supplying the upstairs, but they explained that it would create un-even heat upstairs, and the cost of running a single system to heat two floors was just too inefficient. With electric heaters for our size space, it was an additional $90-150 to our monthly PSEG bill, depending on outdoor temperatures and use.

[gx89]

I have gas heat, the house was like this when I purchased it. I have a 33+yr old boiler and the basement was finished about 22yrs ago according to prior owner. Since the utility room is in the basement they added a zone and just did baseboard like the rest of the house. I would say there is about 25ft of baseboard for a 425sq ft open space. The Laundry, Crapper, mini room don't have heat since they don't need it.