OT: Electric furnace, heat pump questions.

It has been a while since I asked any questions, but here is one for those of you who either own a newer mobile home or work on them.

We are considering purchasing a 32x70 Southern, zone 3 insulated with 6 inch walls to replace our old 14x70 that will be lucky to make it through the winter. Price is right, it is a 2009 display model.

The price we have negotiated does NOT include the outside A/C unit, and will have an independent hauler deliver and set up. His fees are $6250 to haul it 295 miles, set, level, vinyl, hook all the crossovers, roof cap. We will skirt, stretch the carpet at the marriage, hook up water, sewer, power.

But, back to main question, I am scared of the electric furnace. We are used to our propane furnace. I am worried the electric furnace is going to be EXPENSIVE to run. Our power costs about $185.00 for around 1050 KW or so. So in other words, about 18 cents KW/hour instead of the so called 8 cents before they get done adding "facility charge, line maintainance charge, depreciation charge, equipment maintainance charge, etc".

It will cost us more to install a true heat pump, either air or ground source than just a cheap A/C. The electric furnace CLAIMS to be 100 percent efficient, BUT??

The new 32x70 does have a fireplace. Could burn wood, but would I be better off to convert it to gas?

Have also thought about getting an outside wood furnace. If so, I think the fireplace would be better as gas, need to have some way to keep it warm WHEN the power goes off again this winter. My generator can't begin to pull the electric furnace, I think I can get more heat from the fireplace as gas than I can from wood without the fire danger. DOUG

When my AC unit went out I replaced it with a heat pump air to air type and it only cost about $1500 more then just a plain Jane AC/Furnace would have cost me. My heating bills now are about $200 a month summer or winter but I'm on a level pay option

I installed a Heat Pump/ propane unit 5 years ago and am very well satisfied with it. The electric bill runs in the $150- $180 range year round. Also use about 1200 gal of propane per year. The heat pump provides heat until the outside temp drops below 45 deg. Then the propane kicks in. This is in a 125 year old house, well insulated and new windows.

Doug, How efficent is the fire-place. Is is sealed? Does it burn outside air?
Heat pumps might be 100% efficent but what is the unit price? I think that when it gets below 40% the it uses resistance heat (like cig- lighter in car). Back in winters 1977 thru 1984 which were pretty cold, I don't think I would want an all electric.
I would consider both types of heat and tax
reduction.
Led

I presume the electric furnace is included with this home due to it being a southern zone 3 model. I would be afraid of electric bills as well. That being said, if you are going to purchase and install your own A/C unit anyway, I would definitely opt to spend the extra money and get a heat pump. You might get a break from the power company / co-op with all electric heat as well. But, I think I would also opt for the outside wood stove also. If you are very handy, you can build the heated air type pretty easily. That's what I use. My $.02.

Your outdoor heatpump will work down to about 38 F. Then the electric resistance heat will kick in. What is the SEER of the unit? Not all air interfaced units are of the same efficiency. Propane or oil back up to the heat pump would be the way to go.

No way would I use wood or pellet or kerosene aux heat in a premanufactured house. If you could swing it, a full block foundation or crawl space will save a bunch of fuel.

Just got done paying $9k for a 3.5 T 15 SEEr heat pump. Trane.

When you say both types of heat, do you mean electric and wood? Gas and electric?

Can't answer where the fireplace pulls the air. I think it will be from inside the house, as are most. It does have a full glass screen that can be pulled shut to prevent heat loss when not using it.

Have also thought about getting a corn burner, such as the Snow-Flame. I have been around the Snow-Flame, one of the bar/grills back home heats a 150 year old limestone block building with them. Only big problem is that all the ground I farm here is in hay.

I can break 17 acres that WAS corn ground 8 years ago, need to get it approved by ASCS before I do. It is a real S-O-B to get in and out of with a combine, just barely able to crawl the ditches on the way in with hay equipment. The ground itself is flat, just can't get in or out with anything wider than about 16 ft, or more than 50 small or 5 big bales at a time. My 4x38 corn planter and combine will go, IF I plank across the ditches, so can raise enuf corn for the stove. DOUG

We plan to pour piers, tied together with re bar, flint rock between the piers with a VERY thin cement cap on top of the rock. The cement cap will extend beyond the outside edge by 3 inches or so, it will be dug down maybe only 6 inches more or so where the "skirting" will go.

I know the thin cap will crack up, but will still beat having no vapor barrier and will be nice to lay on to hook it all up.

We plan on using blocks for skirting inside of what the county can see. If it is on a true block foundation it becomes taxable as a true house. In other words, we will use blocks to skirt it, but still use the junk plastic skirting for one end to get access to underneath, and hide the blocks with the plastic junk all the way around it. Yes, we have thought about the energy savings from using blocks, we are going to even if county gets greedy. DOUG

I wouldn't buy a zone 3 where we live. Did you check with Ramsey Jones in LaGrange MO. I have bought a few from them and found them to be honest and resonable on price. (Daughter and Son-in-law went down to Columbia MO and saved 500.00 over RJ,but they never got the other dealer to fix anything under warranty)

An electric heat pump is only good down to about 32. Then the heat strips would need to energized, It would take about 15 KW (a 10 and a 5) for that size house and a 5 ton A/C or heat pump. Heat pumps cost about the same as running A/C in the summer but the heat strips will eat some electric. I would buy a regular A/C(Not a heat pump) and install a propane or natural gas furnace. Heres the kicker----A/C units will be at least 40% higher in the next 20 days. The R-22 units will not be sold after 12 Dec. I think. The new freon works at much higher pressure and requires some new tools for installation and service. I would be out shopping for the machinery in the next few days. I still prefer R-22 even if the price of freon doubles. The new systems have some problems and the new 22 units should last 20 years. Henry

I sure hope that it wasn't a R-22 unit becasue I put one in in August for Less that 4500$ including 3 ducts. Actual cost to me for machinery was1400$ for a 13 Seer. Henry

Fireplace air will eventually have to come in thru cracks etc. Otherwise there is not enough oxygen to keep the fire burning. Also, Not a good source of whole house heat. Most today have circulating fans to push the heat out but it stays fairly close.

It is true what is said about heat pumps and if installed with a propane furnace can save money. I have my heat pump set up to run to 35. It really does well. However, I sometimes question the value of heat pumps in the frozen north. We here in NC only see very low temps 4 or 5 times a year.(below 25 F) Most preconstucted homes have ductwork installed so that should be a savings in labor and materials. Henry

From what I know about Illinois weather, I sure wouldn't want an electric furnace there. I remember getting stranded for several days in your lovely state during the blizzard of '79. The "100 percent efficient" claim for the electric furnace is meaningless: ALL electric heaters are 100 percent efficent. A heat pump, on the other hand, will create more heat than it uses, although how much depends on the temperature. Yes, the auxiliary heat will kick on in lower temperatures, but even under the coldest conditions it will be more efficient than the electric furnace. One trick is to not change the thermostat more than a few degrees at a time. I think you can buy setback thermostats made specifically for heat pumps that will slowly adjust during the day to avoid kicking in the aux heat.

What fuels are available to you? A heat pump will be more expensive to operate than natural gas, but maybe not much more than propane.

Unless the fireplace is made for heating rather than looks, I wouldn't count on being able to heat with it.

Personally, I'd just rip out the electric furnace and replace it with a gas one.

we live in pa in 40x70 with electric heat and love it here if go total electric they give alitle break on kwhr better then buying gas or oil

Just to clarify, when you are talking about mobile home insulation zone 3 is for the northern states. In other words, the most insulation, not the least. DOUG

a heat pump is great in Nc. questionable in northern Va. and almost useless in Pa. as far as saving money over the cost of the machine vs. staight electric. after installing many and servicing more than my share you need a gas furnace in a northern climate. just my .02 .

Just a quick link to a chart comparing costs of different heat sources.



http://www.alternative-heating-info.com/Current_Average_Annual_Heating_Fuel_Costs.html

This of course is a simple one, yet I have others that get more complex.

I happen to like this one as it shows off the effectiveness of a air tight stove.

http://www.extension.umaine.edu/onlinepubs/htmpubs/7216.htm[/url]

I have a 2000 sq. foot pole barn that I use for an office and shop. We installed an air to air heat pump when we built it. Runs on the heat pump down 22 degrees before the the electric furnace kick on. You can have your furnace man set the temp where you want it to switch over. From what I've experienced Most winter days all of the spring and fall you'll run on the heat pump and then the summer you'll have an air conditioner. I'm in northeast Ohio.

Do you have a source of water to run a 'ground source" heat pump rather than an "air source" heat pump?
Around here an airsource heat pump is useless from Nov to March.
I'm thinking of sinking another well and installing a ground source heat pump here. My yard is all driveway, pool, weeping beds and tree plantation. So 5000ft of buried pipe is out of the question.

It is kind of hard to advise you without more information. I assume that since you had a propane furnace in the old mobile home, that you do not have access to piped in natural gas. But you probably have an already in place propane tank that you could use in the new mobile home. Also you didn't give information about how much time you have to deal with a wood burner. Wood stoves or furnaces take a bunch of time to deal with getting, splitting and storing wood, feeding the fire, cleaning ashes out and doing general maintenance on the unit. My experience with using gas heat is that it doesn't take much time at all to keep it working perfectly.

Something else to consider is your insurance rates. When we had a mobile home, I installed a special certified mobile home wood stove after sometimes paying $300+ a month to heat the mobile home with the electric furnace. I got a permit, did the installation perfectly and passed both the inspections. Yet when my insurance company learned I had a wood stove (I told them), they more than doubled my insurance rates. And after a few years, that company decided that they would no longer insure ANY mobile homes that had wood stoves, and canceled our policy. I finally found another company that would insure us, but they charged about $1000/year to insure the mobile home and contents for about $25K value. Suddenly the economy of burning wood was much less inviting than it had been.

Eventually we built a new home, and since a natural gas line was installed on our road, we got set up to use gas for heating the house, heating water and also a gas dryer. Although the price of natural gas has risen a bunch in the time since we hooked up, I believe we spend less for heat now in a fairly large house than we used to in the much smaller mobile home. Our insurance is lots less expensive for many times the maximum payout if it should ever be completely destroyed. The gas is convenient, relatively inexpensive and so far has been completely reliable. It is also extremely clean, which is very different than what we experienced from the wood stove in the living room of our mobile home. While I really enjoyed the radiant heat from the wood stove, I suspect that gas heating is more healthy. My wife has developed asthma and probably could not stand to be in a house heated with wood now.

Propane costs more for a given amount of heat than the same amount of heat from natural gas. Propane also either has to be delivered or hauled in small containers rather than just coming from a gas line in the ground.

But unless you have lots of time to deal with messing with wood all the time and have a free or nearly free source of usable firewood, I bet that converting to a propane furnace would be your best move.

We have some problems with power outages, sometimes lasting for days. The wood stove in the mobile home kept us warm and OK during those times and we even cooked meals on it. Now with the natural gas system we have I have added a generator to run the furnace, well pump, freezers and refrigerator. A fairly small 6500 watt generator set does the job to keep us going. It would take a huge generator to run electric resistance heating!

Most fireplaces are not very efficient at producing room heat. They can be nice to look at and seeing the flames and coals is enjoyable, but without strongly sealing glass doors, I think a fireplace actually sucks more warm air out of a house than it produces. They are also messy and most smoke, at least some of the time. If I had a mobile home with a fireplace, I would strongly consider removing the fireplace and either replacing it with a mobile home wood stove, or with a gas stove that requires no electricity to work in a power outage.

Heat pumps are neat--A/C in the Summer and heat the rest of the year. Most of the older designs are not very efficient at making heat if the air temperature is much below freezing. But I have read that some newer types work better at colder air temperatures. The other alternative is the geothermal type, which is extremely efficient. But the installation of ground loops is costly--my neighbor installed about a MILE of loops buried 6 feet down, and can be a real hassle in stony ground. Another alternative would be to pump well water, extract some heat from the water, and reinject the cooler water into another well. But that would take a bunch more electricity than the ground loop type system.

If you are like most of us, money is fairly tight, especially right after buying the new mobile home. I think I would consider replacing the electric furnace now with a propane furnace, or maybe just see how bad the electric bills are through this Winter. They might not be as bad as you fear...hopefully. Then when the weather is better, you could possibly set up a heat pump of some kind or some other alternative system. You probably will not need air conditioning for a while! Good luck!