Heating and cooling our small house for under $2,000!
- Tara Miller
- Jan 16, 2017
- 3 min read
I caught a small part of an episode of Property brother’s today at the dentist office and as I was sitting there enjoying one of the few moments where a kid was not telling me a knock-knock joke I caught hold of the conversation going on in front of my unfocused eyes “The furnace was on its last legs but it just died as well as the A/C unit and the HVAC guy says the whole systems needs to be replaced. This will cost $15,000”. Ouch! That is a lot of money for anyone. The first thought in my mind was it will never cost me that much. It will never cost $15,000 to replace. It won’t even cost me the $5,000-6,000 estimated by my septic contractor who “knew a guy” to install a new system on my 1000 Sq. Ft. house. Do you want to know how much it will cost me? $2,000 for heating AND cooling!
Amazing, right? That means repairs are that much more affordable and I also don’t need a contracted installer or have to dedicate precious space to ducting or have an ugly unit sitting in my yard waiting for me to work down my Pinterest to-do list to make it pretty. With the system we’ve settled on I can replace units as they break without replacing a whole system.
For our cooling, I have purchased Noria, a window A/C unit that is a huge step above the window units you are familiar with. Noria is smaller, sleeker, smarter and lighter. With Noria, I can move units around my house because it weighs 8 lbs. I can control the unit from my phone or tablet and it stores smartly under beds, in drawers or in closets. The 3 units, I am planning on one in the living area, kitchen and down stairs bedroom during the day and at night moving one upstairs to our bedroom, cost $930 with shipping and will be delivered later this year. I will give a full review once I have tested them out.
Our heat will be provided by Econo-Heat, wall mounted units that move air via convection so they are slim and do not get hot to the touch. This is very important with small kids running around. When I was researching how to heat our small house I looked at wood stoves seriously because, let’s face it, they are romantic but I could not escape the clearances needed which would eat space. This would mean the stove would be out in a room where it could be easily run into, bumped or tripped on. I could not envision a wood stove not being a danger to my kids. There are wall mounted propane heaters but they were outside of our budget and we have wood but we would also ways need to purchase propane. The Econo-heat is easily available at our local hardware stores, it doesn’t get hot to the touch, and it stores easily and can be moved around the house like the Noria. If we purchase 4-5 (living room, downstairs bedroom, kitchen, upstairs bedroom and maybe bathroom) then we have spent approx. $550. That is savings! I have budgeted for more heaters than A/C units because the heaters are convection and don’t have a fan. This means they take longer to heat a room than our A/C units. The heaters specifications are also for a smaller space so we will need more to warm the same square footage.
We still have $450 left in our budget but some of that will go to electrical install, incidentals and in case I have underestimated the number of units. But this is a far cry from the $15,000 sticker shock I heard on that design show this morning and I am still smiling.
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