House with electric baseboard and two wood inserts in the Northeast?

[Badfish740]

We're currently debating whether to renovate or buy another house and I went out looking at a few today. One that I couldn't get into but drove by is a nice 4 bed/2.5 bath bi-level with a full basement and two fireplaces (one in the basement, one in the living room) each with a wood burning insert. The main source of heat is electric baseboards. It turned me off at first, but I used this calculator to crunch some numbers:

http://nepacrossroads.com/fuel-comparison-calculator.php

My cost for electricity is $0.10246 per kWh, so assuming 100% efficiency, electricity will cost me $29.89 per million BTU. By comparison, oil at the rate I currently pay ($2.98/gallon) and 83% efficiency costs me $24.76 per million. I've just never seen electric baseboard used for anything other than supplemental heat in a basement family room or a bathroom. I don't know if the house has central air, but if it does I'm wondering if I could plumb in my Englander add-on furnace. I'll find out tomorrow. In the meantime I'd appreciate any thoughts on electric heat in the Northeast.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Odds are the inserts provided most of the heat.

A good thing with electric is you can shut off unused rooms. The bad thing is that difference of $5 can really make a difference if it's a hard winter and you are using lots and lots of energy to heat a house.

 

[Swedishchef]

I am in the NORTH east. My house is all electric and I supplement with wood.

As Limestone said, with electric you can heat whatever rooms you want. In my house it is simple: I turn on the heat in the dining room and living room. All bedrooms are set to 18. In the daytime the heat from the LR and DR supplies heat to bedrooms (other end of the house). LR + DR = 20,5 degrees. bedrooms = 19.5 degrees.

I strongly recommend digital thermostats. They increase the power (voltage?) to the heaters in increments of 10% or 20%. I normally only have 40% of my DR heaters running ( 1200 watts out of the 3000). electricity is cheap where I live...



Andrew

 

[Badfish740]

I am in the NORTH east. My house is all electric and I supplement with wood.

As Limestone said, with electric you can heat whatever rooms you want. In my house it is simple: I turn on the heat in the dining room and living room. All bedrooms are set to 18. In the daytime the heat from the LR and DR supplies heat to bedrooms (other end of the house). LR + DR = 20,5 degrees. bedrooms = 19.5 degrees.

I strongly recommend digital thermostats. They increase the power (voltage?) to the heaters in increments of 10% or 20%. I normally only have 40% of my DR heaters running ( 1200 watts out of the 3000). electricity is cheap where I live...

If it's good enough for Quebec it's good enough for New Jersey! Again, I pay $0.10246 per kWh, not sure how that compares to what you pay with exchange rate, etc... Will report back on what I find tomorrow.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Canada has stupid cheap prices for electricity. I pay 23c per kWh.

 

[Badfish740]

Canada has stupid cheap prices for electricity. I pay 23c per kWh.

Wow-that's twice what I pay and you're one state over!

 

[Swedishchef]

Canada is cheaper on average than the US. But we pay high rates depending on where you live (province). https://www.hydro.mb.ca/regulatory_affairs/energy_rates/electricity/utility_rate_comp.shtml Fortunately I pay the least amount in Canada.

yeah Badfish, it is a decent setup. I like it. I don't stress about heating with wood but I enjoy it when my hydro meter isn't spinning so fast it could cut through a tree.

My last bill was for 72 days (December 4th to Feb 13th). It included Christmas (I love christmas lights..and real ones, not LED ones) and we baked and entertained quite a bit. My consumption was 4410 KWh and I paid $385.65 taxes inc. Therefore, $0.0874/kWh taxes, distribution fees, etc all included. It could have been much worse.

Andrew

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Wow-that's twice what I pay and you're one state over!

A lot of my cost is a $17 flat fee for the privilege of being hooked to the grid. I used less than 200 kWh last month so it doesn't get spread out very far. I think my total supply and delivery portion was $41 so that 1 fee practically doubles my bill.

 

[Swedishchef]

200 kWh for a month? Do you have a hot water tank?! SLeep beside your wood stove? That's not much whatsoever!

Andrew

 

[DougA]

Not sure if you are calculating electricity prices off the base price, the bill price or if there is any difference in your state. In Ontario, we have 'time of use charges', so power is cheap at night and always very expensive at breakfast & supper time. The important point (for me anyway) is that the rate that is charged is roughly 50% of the total bill. If I use $250/month of electricity, my bill will be $500. The other $250. is all sorts of political BS and taxes.
I rarely use our baseboard heaters in the house but the chart from last Thursday's usage shows the cost of our dining room heater. Our wood stove was off all of Wed. because it was sunny and we get mid 70's in the house from solar heat. I got up at 4:30 am and it was chilly. Normally I would start a fire but the forecast was a sunny day again and I was lazy, so I turned up the 2500 watt baseboard heater instead. You can easily see the spike and the heater stayed on until about 8:00 am, when the sun started to warm the house up. In that time, we used $1.77 in power, minus the base usage which would be about .35. So, we used $1.50 in electricity but I will have to pay $3.00 or almost $1. per hour for one large heater.
BTW, the spike from 7 to 8 pm is cooking supper. We eat later now to save $$. Green=cheap, yellow= med, red= high $$
Make sure you are comparing the true, full cost of electricity in your calculations and remember, electricity rates are not going down.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

200 kWh for a month? Do you have a hot water tank?! SLeep beside your wood stove? That's not much whatsoever!

Andrew

For the last couple years I've been switching everything I can to NG. Per btu, electricity is 6x more expensive than NG for me. I had a heavy month of usage last month with 147 therms. I have a 30g indirect tank attached to my boiler for heating water. Last month was my high for my combined NG and electricity bill at $146.

 

[woodgeek]

BAseboard heat seems to be popular in the house rental market....zero maintenance, and the renter pays the bills.

 

[Swedishchef]

BAseboard heat seems to be popular in the house rental market....zero maintenance, and the renter pays the bills.

And you don't need to worry that the renter is unfamiliar with wood burning/seasoned wood, etc.

 

[Swedishchef]

Not sure if you are calculating electricity prices off the base price, the bill price or if there is any difference in your state. In Ontario, we have 'time of use charges', so power is cheap at night and always very expensive at breakfast & supper time. The important point (for me anyway) is that the rate that is charged is roughly 50% of the total bill. If I use $250/month of electricity, my bill will be $500. The other $250. is all sorts of political BS and taxes.
I rarely use our baseboard heaters in the house but the chart from last Thursday's usage shows the cost of our dining room heater. Our wood stove was off all of Wed. because it was sunny and we get mid 70's in the house from solar heat. I got up at 4:30 am and it was chilly. Normally I would start a fire but the forecast was a sunny day again and I was lazy, so I turned up the 2500 watt baseboard heater instead. You can easily see the spike and the heater stayed on until about 8:00 am, when the sun started to warm the house up. In that time, we used $1.77 in power, minus the base usage which would be about .35. So, we used $1.50 in electricity but I will have to pay $3.00 or almost $1. per hour for one large heater.
BTW, the spike from 7 to 8 pm is cooking supper. We eat later now to save $$. Green=cheap, yellow= med, red= high $$
Make sure you are comparing the true, full cost of electricity in your calculations and remember, electricity rates are not going down.
View attachment 155876

Turn on the electric heat between 2-3 AM, bake cookies between 11am-noon, roast a turkey over night. lol

 

[Badfish740]

BAseboard heat seems to be popular in the house rental market....zero maintenance, and the renter pays the bills.

This actually was a rental unit that the landlord has decided to sell. I'm very interested in it. It's a 4 bedroom/2 bath (double what we have now) with a walkout basement/2 car garage under the house on 1.5 acres surrounded by about 700 acres of preserved state land.

 

[CaptSpiff]

If it's good enough for Quebec it's good enough for New Jersey! Again, I pay $0.10246 per kWh, not sure how that compares to what you pay with exchange rate, etc... Will report back on what I find tomorrow.

Badfish: Typical rates in NJ run $0.20 per kwh. You must be leaving something out of your number.

Post de-regulation, the Local Utility usually splits out your bill into 3 parts:
1. Fixed monthly (meter) charge.
2. Transmission & Distribution (poles & wire maintenance), usually price varies with usage (cost regulated by PUC/PSC).
3. Generation (cost of energy product), usually fixed price regardless of usage, but price adjusted periodically by market costs.

You'll need to add them all together to get the true cost of your monthly electrical costs.
I think heating with electric baseboard is about 2x Natural Gas and 1.5x Oil. But it might even be worse than that.

 

[Babaganoosh]

I'm on the Jersey shore. Last month my rate was 14.7 cents per kWh

 

[Highbeam]

I have no central HVAC, only the electric resistance wall heaters in each room plus my woodstove. They don't cost you a penny when they're shut off and that's how mine have been for the last several years. I don't even test them anymore.

They are cheap to install, meet minimum code for whole house, thermostatic, primary heat. No maintenance, existing fuel source, effective, and yes, cheap in every way except for the cost of btus depending on your market.

On one hand they're the perfect heat source for a woodstove guy. On the other hand, if you were forced to use them your bills could be high.

 

[scotthershall]

I realize this thread is fairly old but I thought I'd provide my experience...

Late last year I bought a 1600sq ft split level house with electric baseboards (there's no room for a boiler the way the house is designed). And as others have mentioned, there's pros and cons. The biggest con is the operating cost. Another con might be having to control multiple thermostats (I always seem to forget to turn one of the manual ones down). Our full electric cost is about $0.22/kwh (that includes generation, delivery, and the myriad of other fees). We mostly kept the rooms around 50 with electric with the exception of the bedroom at night which was around 65, and supplemented with a kerosene heater and use of a VC Vigilant with a fireback so warped the damper won't close. We spent about $250 in electricity and probably $100 in kero per month for January, February, and March. We're planning on replacing the VC with a pellet stove this summer which will be run 24/7 next winter. I'm hoping to keep the house at actual comfortable temperature while cutting operating costs in half.

The pro is very minimal maintenance which consists of some occasional vacuuming to remove dust and pet hair. You can replace a 6' baseboard for about $50, although there's no benefit to replacing one unless it fails or to update the aesthetics. If you renovate a room, you could look into radiant floor heat.

If you plan on heating with wood, then electric baseboard is a excellent "primary backup," although I'd still prefer natural gas (which isn't available on my street).

 

[DougA]

You can replace a 6' baseboard for about $50, although there's no benefit to replacing one unless it fails or to update the aesthetics

I just spray painted a 32 yr. old 6' baseboard heater to update it on the cheap when I was painting our dining room. Vacuumed out the dust bunnies and 7 mouse skeletons stuck behind it (took some photos for this forum but will only post if there are many requests ) , replaced a few feet of wiring the mice had chewed and it's good for another 30 yrs.

Agreed that if you don't have NG, baseboard is super cheap to install.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Somewhere way down on my to do list I plan to make covers for my baseboards. They look like crap, but work.

 

[Swedishchef]

Somewhere way down on my to do list I plan to make covers for my baseboards. They look like crap, but work.

These electric heaters are much nicer... http://www.convectair.ca/en They are pricey but are super heaters. I have one in my bathroom.

Andrew

 

[billb3]

electric is $0.285/kwh here.
there's a discount for heating but there's also a monthly min threshold to get that rate.
a million btu@ 28.5¢ would be $83
oil at $3.00/gal is $24
a cord of wood at $100/cord is $6.50
I burn as much wood as I can.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Do you get a 10 cord drop and process it yourself?

 

[Highbeam]

Do you get a 10 cord drop and process it yourself?

Yeah, that 100$ per cord price is the best I can do for log loads here in WA. Purchased wood is nearing 250$ per cord CSD. Still 2.5 *6.5 is only 16.25$ per million.

That's raw fuel. Oil can be burnt more efficiently than wood.