In the summer of 2016, I built a new house for my family, but the budget that was allocated for the project was exceeded pretty fast by the workers team, so we decided to install as heating source only an electrical system based on cables mounted under the floor.
The company that installed the heating system told me that even if it is a heating system that uses only electricity, the energy bill during the winter will be pretty small, around $200 per month.
During October 2016, the temperatures started to fall, so we decided to use the new heating system installed under the floor.
Everything went normal in the first two to three days (the system needed 24 hours to reach the required temperature inside the house – very low efficiency), but in the fourth day, I realized that the electricity consumption is very high.
Checking the electricity meter, I realized that the system had a consumption of around 200 kWh in 24 hours, to heat only one floor of the house (about 100 square meters).
After three months of using, I decided to stop the heating system because my electricity bill went very high (I paid $2,300 for three months of heating).
In January 2017, I bought a pretty large wood stove that managed to easily heat the first floor of the house.
The wood consumption was decent, so the price paid to heat the first floor of the house for an entire month was only around $150 (much lower than using the heating system installed under the floor).
Using the wood stove was not a very clean activity, not to mention the presence of the smoke (from time to time) inside the house.
However, using wood and wood pellets to heat the first floor of the house helped me to save some money for a better heating system.
During February 2017, outside temperatures went very low -27 degrees Celsius (-16.6 F) and the wood stove was somehow overwhelmed by the freezing temperatures.
During those freezing days of February, a friend told me that I need to use central heating that runs on natural gas to heat the entire house and keep the energy bills at a decent level.
The heating system that uses natural gas heats the house through radiators mounted in every room of the house, so not only one floor of the house.
I filed the documentation required by the gas supplier, but they’ve told me right away that I need to wait around 9 months to be connected because the area where the house is located is not connected to any gas pipeline.
I visited a neighboring house that was using a central heating system running on natural gas, and he even showed me his energy bill during the freezing month of February 2017.
Using natural gas he managed to heat a house that was about the same size with mine, and he paid in February 2017 an energy bill of only $500.
Using the heating system based on cables mounted under the floor, I paid around $800 per month to heat only one floor of my house (half of the house), while my neighbor using natural gas paid only $500 to heat the entire house (two floors) during the freezing month of February 2017.
Today, I’m still waiting to be connected to the gas utility, and I’m pretty worried because the winter is very close, and I don’t want to live the experience of the last winter again.
