Heating a basement

[mithesaint]

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this question, but it seemed right.

I'm in the planning process of finishing my basement, and haven't decided how I will heat it. I'm heating about 800 sq ft, two rooms total. The second room is much smaller, only about 170 sq ft, and will be the wife's workout room, so keeping it toasty is not necessary. I currently heat the rest of the house with an Englander 10-cpm pellet stove, and also have a propane furnace that I use as little as possible.

The basement will be well insulated, probably around R15 or so. Currently, without any insulation or heat source, the basement hangs around 55 in the winter. I want to be as low maintenance as possible. Both the wifey and I work full time and are on-call for our jobs a lot, so adding one more weekly task such as cleaning a pellet stove is unattractive.

As far as I can tell, my options are the following:

1. Pellet stove - like the low cost of operation, and I already have a good supply of pellets. Don't like the weekly maintenance and the start up cost of a stove and venting, etc.

2. Propane wall heater - like the ease of use, cheap to get started. Hate paying the propane guy. Paid 2.49/gallon this year.

3. Electric baseboard - like the ease of use, cheap to get started. Currently paying 6.43/Kwh according to my electric bill. I'm in a very windy area, and would like to add wind power in the future when the price comes down, and I like the idea of already doing some heating with electric, which saves converting later.

What would you do?

 

[Dune]

Wood is free and wood stoves are lower maintainence than pellet stoves.

 

[BrotherBart]

I would revisit that electric bill. Your state average is thirteen cents per KWH.

 

[mithesaint]

Wood is free and wood stoves are lower maintainence than pellet stoves.

Not gonna happen. Don't want to deal with the mess, the bark, the insects, keeping enough seasoned wood around, remembering to fire the stove 3-4 times per day, etc. Not to mention the fact that I have a two story colonial, and it would cost me a fortune in pipe to get the chimney above the roof. That's part of the reason I went with a pellet stove over the wood stove in the first place.

I grew up with wood heat, so I'm familiar with "free" wood. With as few hours of spare time that I have, it's not gonna get spent chasing down free wood. Wood is out.

In terms of electrical cost, I was wrong. The bill is misleading. I am in fact, paying about 0.13/Kwh. The way the bill lists the other charges, it appears that those are fixed, but when I look back at my old bills they aren't.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Make certain you thermal break those concrete walls, DOW has a prefaced foam sheet insulation that is supposedly usable without needing to add drywall called Thermax (something like that). Check with your code folks if it passes muster with them then you can apply several layers of foam insulation with the exposed one being the DOW product. Then you may not need much in the way of heat down in the dungeon.

 

[begreen]

You're used to pellet and have a ready supply. If the pricing is good in your area, maybe that's the best for you.

 

[jimbom]

If you have floor trusses, then use the basement ceiling as a plenum. An eighty degree plenum would radiate ~25 Btu/h ft² at a 55 degree floor. 25 x 800 = 20,000 Btu/hr. Don't know how much extra capacity your pellet stove has, but it might work. Also, the heating load on the basement is not likely to be that high.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

If you have floor trusses, then use the basement ceiling as a plenum. An eighty degree plenum would radiate ~25 Btu/h ft² at a 55 degree floor. 25 x 800 = 20,000 Btu/hr. Don't know how much extra capacity your pellet stove has, but it might work. Also, the heating load on the basement is not likely to be that high.

20,000 Btu/hr is about half of his net Btu from the stove.

And depending upon where the OP is the walls could have most of their depth above the frost line and that will eat up a lot of Btus. It gets even worse if a foot or two of those walls are above ground level and his outside temperatures go well below freezing.

 

[jimbom]

His heating load is probably not that high. I just wanted to throw out the idea of a plenum powered by the existing plant. That plus occasional peaking energy from electric resistance would work. The other ideas, I am sure he has considered.

Saw some Fijitsu ductless heat pumps with a SEER of 25 on sale on the net. Might work for the OP. That is what I am doing when the AC system here gives up.

Some basements, well sealed and insulated, require little heat. Some are heat sinks. Hopefully different suggestions will stimulate a solution that works for the OP.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

His heating load is probably not that high. I just wanted to throw out the idea of a plenum powered by the existing plant. That plus occasional peaking energy from electric resistance would work. The other ideas, I am sure he has considered.

Saw some Fijitsu ductless heat pumps with a SEER of 25 on sale on the net. Might work for the OP. That is what I am doing when the AC system here gives up.

Some basements, well sealed and insulated, require little heat. Some are heat sinks. Hopefully different suggestions will stimulate a solution that works for the OP.

Yes if his basement is well sealed and insulated his heat load will be low, but well insulated varies depending upon local conditions.

For the record I heat my house from the basement with a pellet stove, I do not heat all of my basement level just about 560 square feet of it. The rest of the basement is a garage and maintains about 53°F on waste heat from the heating of domestic hot water. Even part of the garage is finished and finishing the rest of it is on my list.

My basement room is open to the upstairs and thus loses heat to the upstairs and collects the cold air from up there. Even being well insulated that heat loss is decent and it losses temperature fairly fast.

 

[mithesaint]

Pellet stove is pretty much maxed out on a cold, windy day. My house is well insulated, but poorly sealed. MY 2600 poorly sealed sq feet could really use a bigger stove, but I couldn't turn down a $950 CPM. It keeps up ok if it's only cold, but once the wind starts howling it loses the battle.

I'm planning on insulating the basement pretty heavily, so that should help a lot. I like the heat pump idea, but don't want to pay extra for cooling ability that I won't need.

I'm leaning toward insulating heavily and putting in electric baseboard heat. Probably cost a little more to run, but I like the low cost of installation and the ease of use. By the time my two daughters are teenagers, the electric bill will be high enough and the windmill will hopefully be cheap enough to put one of those in the backyard!

 

[BrotherBart]

Well insulated I think the electric is the right choice.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

mithesaint, I have no idea what you have for windows or window area in your house I'm just tossing this link into the conversation because it might help and isn't all that costly to do: http://www.arttec.net/Thermal-Windows/index.htm

I'm going to do this, I have already started gathering the parts, and will cut a few frames out this week.

My goal is to reduce my pellet consumption and even out the temperatures between the rooms upstairs. The window area vs room area is a bit out of balance. I have 18 panels to build. The calculations work out to under a one year pay back for me.

 

[gpcollen1]

You say well insulated and R15 in the same sentence. I would revisit that. You can do better with only losing a bit more room in the basement, just a few inches at floor and walls.

 

[mithesaint]

R15 was a rough number I tossed out. I'm not 100% sure yet, but I'll likely do the following:

Exterior foundation insulation 1" =R5 -ish
Interior foam insulation of R4
Interior fiberglass insulation R-11-13, depending on which I can get

Final number of R20-R22 likely. That will put my basement walls at a higher R value than the exterior walls of my house.

 

[jebatty]

Had the same issue when I finished 350 sq ft for two rooms of what was a tuck-under garage. Normally keep at 55F, except when being actually used. About the same insulation as you. Put in electric baseboard. Rooms heat up very fast when the extra heat is needed. Uses very little electricity otherwise. Would take many years to recover the cost of electric if I had tried to use some other heat source.

Heat the main house 100% with wood, also the shop is 100% wood. Just no practical way to put wood heat into the basement, plus intermittent and use of floor space made the cost for a stove, chimney, etc. out of the question.

 

[velvetfoot]

But what is your current backup heat? In my case, I could run some hot water pipe and use the oil boiler to heat the basement. Still cheaper to run than electric (here).

 

[mithesaint]

Backup heat is a propane forced air furnace. There are a few ducts already in place, but I don't plan on using propane unless I have to. It should be cheaper to use a little bit of electric for the basement vs the whole house propane furnace.

 

[DexterDay]

Sell the Englander and buy a Pellet Furnace off ebay/Craiglist/etc and heat the house and the.basement. . . .

Its a thought. There was a cheap Fahrenheit in the Todelo area about a yr ago. Also a St. Croix unit (not sure if it was Revolution or 050-SCF). But they are out there.

My couple pennies...

 

[velvetfoot]

I guess you're right. You can't close off everything but the basement I guess.
On a related energy cost note, I'm sure this spreadsheet has been cited numerous times, but I love it so much I'm gonna do it again:
http://www.eia.gov/neic/experts/heatcalc.xls

 

[mithesaint]

Good idea Dexter. I'll have to keep an eye out. Do pellet furnaces get vented into the regular ductwork out of the other furnace?

Thanks for the spreadsheet Velvetfoot. Hadn't seen that before, and it was nice to confirm that electric baseboard heat would be preferable to a vented propane heater.

 

[DexterDay]

Yes. Uses existing HVAC. Thats the only reason I suggested it. You said you have a LP.forced air furnace.....

 

[jrendfrey]

i woukld put in a rinnai wall heater i live in n vermont just put on in my living room. propane i pay is 3~45 a gallon but i have only spent 390$ since december. i use wood also but when we want to leave and go somewhere we can and me and my wife like that. there are all kindsof deals on used wall heater on cl i think i paid 180$ for the install thing works great and keeps my house toasty when we cant feed the fire all day and night. my neighbor has a monitor kerosene that he has been using all winter since 94. so up front cost is high maintance is low and it does all tthe work for you. by the way my electric bill is already 200 a month i stear clear of electric heat.

 

[Don2222]

Hello

Why Not Kerosene??

$139.00 for the unit at Home Depot and only $4.59 per gallon at the pumps!!

 

[DexterDay]

Hello

Why Not Kerosene??

......... only $4.59 per gallon at the pumps!!

Thats why! At $4.59, its cheaper to use HHO, Electric, or even LP. Thats way ti expensive. IMO