Saturday, October 1, 2011
Heating and Flooring
Unlike HGTV, where the host has all the answers and a script, I've been contending with a steady stream of folks wandering through the house, measuring, commenting, and leaving estimates.
Flooring
Marmoleum? good for the environment; great for allergies; more expensive to install; doesn't distribute heat as well over in-floor heating in the basement. Should I put it in the kitchen? And under the dining room table? $6/ft plus installation ($3/foot)
Tile? Too cold. Too hard. Too expensive.
Hardwood? Engineered or hardwood? Created by prisoners in Alabama (no joke!) or reclaimed wood? Do I really want hardwood under the dining room table (scrape, scrape)?
Vinyl Plank? Very thin. Looks really nice. Indestructible. Good for over in-floor heat. Helps with head room. Inexpensive. Nasty gases after installation...
And what about our crazy living room floor? Beautiful maple hardwood nail down floor from 1946. So thin, it can't be refinished. Damn nails keep popping up. No sock is safe! Do we replace it?
Heating
The ductwork has to go. We need the head room in the basement and our heating sucks anyway. High efficiency furnaces of any kind don't help in these poorly insulated houses. So oil, gas and regular heat pumps are out.
Ductless heat pump? Amazing green option. Cleans the air. Cools and heats. $30 per month to operate. Super quiet. After government rebates, it would cost $8000 for the outside unit, pipes, and two indoor units. BUT, will we need supplemental heat? Probably. Any room where we close the door won't have heat, so bedrooms will need a baseboard heater.
Convection air heaters on individual thermostats? About $300 per room.
Gas? Bringing gas to the house is only $300, but fireplaces are $3000 plus to install. So we could have $6300 plus the option for a gas stove, but we'd need to supplement again.
Ductless $8000
Gas $6300 (2 FP)
Convection $ 900
Infloor $??? ($5K?)
This option: $20,200
Gas $3300 (1 fp)
Infloor $5000
Convection $2400
This option: $10,700
And we'd have to upgrade our electrical system to 200 amps. Decisions, decisions...
Flooring
Marmoleum? good for the environment; great for allergies; more expensive to install; doesn't distribute heat as well over in-floor heating in the basement. Should I put it in the kitchen? And under the dining room table? $6/ft plus installation ($3/foot)
Tile? Too cold. Too hard. Too expensive.
Hardwood? Engineered or hardwood? Created by prisoners in Alabama (no joke!) or reclaimed wood? Do I really want hardwood under the dining room table (scrape, scrape)?
Vinyl Plank? Very thin. Looks really nice. Indestructible. Good for over in-floor heat. Helps with head room. Inexpensive. Nasty gases after installation...
And what about our crazy living room floor? Beautiful maple hardwood nail down floor from 1946. So thin, it can't be refinished. Damn nails keep popping up. No sock is safe! Do we replace it?
Heating
The ductwork has to go. We need the head room in the basement and our heating sucks anyway. High efficiency furnaces of any kind don't help in these poorly insulated houses. So oil, gas and regular heat pumps are out.
Ductless heat pump? Amazing green option. Cleans the air. Cools and heats. $30 per month to operate. Super quiet. After government rebates, it would cost $8000 for the outside unit, pipes, and two indoor units. BUT, will we need supplemental heat? Probably. Any room where we close the door won't have heat, so bedrooms will need a baseboard heater.
Convection air heaters on individual thermostats? About $300 per room.
Gas? Bringing gas to the house is only $300, but fireplaces are $3000 plus to install. So we could have $6300 plus the option for a gas stove, but we'd need to supplement again.
Ductless $8000
Gas $6300 (2 FP)
Convection $ 900
Infloor $??? ($5K?)
This option: $20,200
Gas $3300 (1 fp)
Infloor $5000
Convection $2400
This option: $10,700
And we'd have to upgrade our electrical system to 200 amps. Decisions, decisions...
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