Electric baseboard vs propane fireplaces

goober055

I have a 2,200 sq ft two story house with 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bath, living room, dining room, family room, kitchen....all upstairs. The kitchen is wide open to the family room. The home is installed with electric baseboard heat, but we heat our home with two propane fireplaces.  The main on is in the living room near the stairwell that goes upstairs, so we leave the doors to the bedrooms open to allow heat flow. It is a 18,000 BTU non vented fireplace with a thermostat and blower.  Really cranks the heat but eats the propane.  In the family room we have a 12,000 BTU propane fireplace to equal out the heat distribution as this is where we spend most of our time.  This cuts down on the main fireplace kicking on so much.  My question is with the prices comparing electric and using the baseboard heat versus using the non vented fireplaces considering the price of propane, am I heating my home in the most efficient manner ?  Should I be using the zoned electric baseboard instead, or maybe they could be used in tandem somehow ?

 

Zman

It depends

It depends on you fuel rates and the efficiency of the heaters. Check this out www.eia.gov/neic/experts/heatcalc.xls



Your electrical efficiency should be about 99% The propane maybe 60%?



Plug in you local rates and there it is.



Carl

icesailor

Unvented Fireplaces:

Did the dealer that sold you those unvented gas fireplaces offer you CO detectors with those gas appliances? Were they permitted and installed by a licensed gas fitter and inspected for safety?

Do you have hard wired smoke alarms that need to be replaced because they are more than 10 years old? You can convert the ones outside the bedrooms to combination units. CO and smoke.

All codes and manufacturers instructions say that you can't install an unvented gas appliance in a bedroom. You are as close as you can get with it being in a bedroom where you let the heat rise into bedrooms with the doors open.

If LP is your choice, do a conversion. Install a gas boiler, and take the baseboard electric heaters out and replace them with same length HW baseboards. Do only the first floor and any rooms that you can easily get to on the second. The first floor will heat the second. Leave the second floor baseboards in place and active. Any electricity you might need will be minimal.

That's how I always did electric heat conversions to keep the cost down. No one ever complained.

If you don't have quality CO detectors in your house, GET THEM. Don't be cheap!!

You and your family's life could depend on it. You could not wake up from the long sleep.