After looking for FOUR YEARS!

https://www.zillow.com/homedet...&utm_source=txtshare

Very nice!

Congratulations!

Yes, congratulations! I’m very happy for you.

Very nice indeed! That's a sizable piece of property too.

Do you have plans for the kid fort?

Pique, this is fantastic news!! Truly, truly fantastic!!!!

Oh, I forgot the important part:

What a great house!!!

That’s great! Where does the piano go?

congrats!

Well, there is a fly in the ointment.

One of the great selling points was the fully paid off solar panels, which are only two years old.

The seller's info packet had no utility bills, and there were no disclosures about the utilities.

Because we had literally a half an hour to put in an offer after our agent did a virtual tour via zoom, we didn't get a chance to see a lot of the usual documents first.

It turns out that even though they have solar panels, they don't have enough power to heat the house in the winter, so they have space heaters running in all the rooms. Some months the electric bill has been over $600! In the summer, it's only $4. But over two years the average electric bill is $130/mo.

That is acceptable as we can go on a plan with the electric company to just pay the average every month. However, I am really concerned about depending on space heaters all winter. 1. They are dangerous--they start fires. 2. We can't leave the house empty and go on a trip and heat the house with space heaters. 3. They dry out the air terribly--and I suffer from dry eyes and get sick when the air is too dry. 4. The temperature can't be maintained at a steady rate like you can with a whole house thermostat. 5. Piano will be matchsticks--I can't pump out enough humidity to counter how drying space heaters are--plus running a humidifier to that extent will cost even more.

Am I wrong about this?

I don’t understand.

Does the house have a central heating system? What does it run on? Is there ductwork?

Do you have city gas to the house?

Edit: Listing says gas connected, no mention of heating type or if there is A/C. Very odd.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
I don’t understand.

Does the house have a central heating system? What does it run on? Is there ductwork?

Do you have city gas to the house?

There is an old boiler that provides hot water heat using municipal gas as the fuel. The boiler needs to be replaced. Rather than get a new boiler, they installed solar and converted the house to all electric.

So yes there is gas to the house, but it isn't what they are using. The old heating system is hot water baseboard (which I really like).

I have an email out to my agent asking her to find out if space heaters are the only way to heat the house in winter. If so, I can't imagine how that is smart or safe.

Your best move will be to replace the boiler. Gas will be most efficient. There are heat pump versions but with your climate I doubt they’ll make financial sense.

I don’t know why you’d prefer individual electric resistance heaters but if you do you’ll want to install electric wall heaters or baseboard heaters, each hard wired in its own circuit. The plug-in kind are not ideal. The quality of heat/humidity will be the same with either hot water or electric heat - they're both radiant systems and work the same way.

Humidifying the piano room is going to require a separate humidifier or damp chaser with either system.

As an aside, it would be a rare lender who would be willing to finance a house without a central heating plant. It’s been a code requirement in most areas forever.

thanks, steve. i hate electric heat. i grew up in a house with hot water baseboard and I like it just fine. A lot less dust than forced air, and not as drying.

our agent is now saying that the inspector will inspect the boiler and tell us if it needs to be replaced. The total of all the inspections is going to run us $1,200. I'm not even going that far unless the seller makes a full disclosure. For all we know they didn't replace the boiler because the hot water baseboards have problems we don't know about. They didn't disclose anything, and not telling potential buyers that the house needs space heaters in all the rooms in winter is not acceptable.

I suspect they didn't realize that solar wouldn't work in Missoula in winter. It is very cloudy there all winter.