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QUESTION:I am buying a house for rental property. It currently has a 2 year old
13 seer 3.5 ton Carrier Central AC System that is self contained and
sits outside. There is a huge duct that comes out of the unit and
enters the crawl space and cools the house.
As for heat, the house was made in 65 and has electric base board heat
and I would like to convert to gas forced air, or maybe even a boiler
system for water that heats the floors. What are my options? If I was
to install a natural gas heater, could I hook into the AC Duct under
the house? I hate to think what the electric heat is going to cost
with base board.
ANSWER: Why? It's a rental unit. You're not going to live there. Why do you care what
the heating system is?
Retrofitting a hot-water radiant floor heating system into a house that wasn't
designed for it will be very, very expensive. Hot water heat is wonderful --
but if you're going to retrofit that into a house, do it to _your_own_ house,
not a rental. That depends a lot on what type of energy sources are available at the
property. For example, if there are no gas mains in the neighborhood, then
putting in a natural gas furnace is obviously not an option. Yes, but there are several questions you need answers to first:
1) is natural gas available at the house?
2) is there a place to put the furnace?
3) is there a place to *vent* the furnace?
4) can you recover the additional cost?
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