First home, what can I expect?
Question by 411me: First home, what can I expect?
So i just bought a new condo in ontario, closing date is in january. I have been renting for 5 years all inclusive so I have never had to worry about utilities. My condo is a two bedroom, smallish, with all electric baseboards, and a gas fireplace on the main floor. Luckily all of the windows are newer and it seems to be insulated well. I am wondering how I can keep my costs low, for example, should I only use the gas to heat the main level and keep the upstairs low, since heat rises? should i put an electric fireplace in the basement or would it be the same as running the baseboard heaters down there? and any idea on approximately how much during the winter an average electrical/gas bill would be? Just trying to prepare as best I can.
Best answer:
Answer by Karen L
If this is a brand new building, there’s no way to find out about previous utility bills but since you say newer windows, I get the impression that the condo is new to you and not newly constructed. If so, you can call the utilities concerned and should be able to find out last year’s billings for that address. That will at least give you some idea how much you can expect to pay. However, once you move in, the only real way to reduce costs and to see how much it costs to keep the place how you like it is to experiment with things and see what the bill comes to. Lots of people in multi-unit buildings find they don’t need to use a lot of heat. When you have fewer outside walls, you lose less heat. If there are baseboard heaters in the basement, there isn’t really any advantage to putting another electric heater down there.
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This is probably apples and oranges but i was installing replacement dampers and chimney balloons in a condo assoc of 500 units in IL and every last one of these 10 yr old condos had electric baseboard heat (what an ill-conceived notion) and two wood fireplaces. Some of the more vocal owners admitted to spending $300-$500 per month on electricity in the winter months in these 1500 sq ft condos. Granted they also were also the ones trying to “supplement” their heat with the wood fireplace (another ill-conceived notion) .
In your case, only use this gas fireplace if it is a direct vent that vents straight through the wall. If it is a gas log unit plug it and forget using it. Even if it is a vent free gas log I wouldn’t use it due to NO2 concerns. Personally, I stopped offering vent free for liability sake.
Anyway, with Electric heat the cost will be pretty high, but you evidently have gas service for the fireplace so it stands to reason you can get a direct vent fireplace hooked to it if your current one isn’t a direct vent already. Using that as your primary heat source would be good and just supplement with the baseboard heating as needed. Any direct vent heating appliance will trump your baseboard heat so you may want to consider one for the basement.