hagueok

what type of heating systems are generally used over there?to heat your home

scrubbedexpat091

Depends on location, in my area electric baseboard and forced air systems along with heat pumps are most popular it seems.

Canada2006

Electric here in Québec as the cost of electricity is really low. With a heatpump it costs an astounding $1500 a year to heat my detached house.

Gas is very rare (bummer for cooking) and there is some heating oil used but not much.

Electric heating tends to be either by baseboards or forced air - with baseboards you can't use a heatpump so would double your electric costs more or less.

What's also strange is that a lot of people rent their water heater from Hydro Québec for about $15 a month rather than buy.

Souvenir

It's not unique to Quebec to rent water heaters. It was the same at our house in Oakville.

You're right about power costs. We're all-electric, on an equalised payment plan, and pay about $1700 a year.

Atlantic Xpat

Hot water radiation through baseboard heaters for us. Powered by an oil fired boiler. Most common around here is Electric baseboard heaters at the lower/middle end of the market and heat pumps increasingly at the higher end.

iaink

Where are you?

In Ontario those two are both rare in the average home. Baseboard heating might be common in apartments because its cheap to install, but for a home they are prohibitively expensive to run. Heat pumps are prohibitively expensive to install (5 times the cost of a regular furnace), and require a water source for the heat exchanger to be anything like efficient in the Ontario climate. They are becoming more common, but still few and far between

The norm in Ontario is some sort of forced air heating. Often Oil fired, although Natural gas is more popular where its available.(far from universal) Electric heating in Ontario is too expensive..unlike the East we dont have access to the ultra cheap Hydro power(although that contract runs out for them in about ten years I think)

A/C is more of a factor in Ontario too I guess due to the higher summer humidity levels, and that's easier to piggy back on a forced air system.

livermanl

This does ours a gas furnace (can be really expensive if you have an old one). But at the same time if you get a brand new one it is relatively cheap.

dbd33

We chop down trees, break the trees into small pieces and burn them. We do, however, have a gas stove. Primitive heating we can deal with but not primitive cooking.

Souvenir

We are gradually replacing our original baseboard heaters with convection models. They are more expensive to buy but cheaper to run and they look better. Hydro Quebec gives out a rebate if you fit electronic thermostats.

fledermaus

We have oil forced air, electric baseboards and a wood stove with ceiling fans.......

So far we have used the forced air. The baseboard heaters haven't been used in a long while. We dont have decent wood yet for the stove. Next year we are replacing the oil with gas, and can then have a gas cooker again,, yee ha.

Piff Poff

We have gas forced air here in Red Deer. Just what you need to dry the dry air out even moreBUT it seems to work just fine, we keep toasty warm and there are no ugly radiators taking up all the wall spaces.

iaink

Some sort of wood stove is a good idea if you are a bit away from "Civilisation" (ie a big city where people routinely shoot each other). Forced air needs electricity to run the fans, and thats not always guaranteed in a winter storm when you need heat most.

Plus wood often works out a little cheaper than oil, especially if you are only looking to keep the living room warm in the evening. Its more work though, even if you are not cutting and splitting it yourself, bringing it in, cleaning up after etc.

With any heating here some sort of plan for humidifying is a good idea.

Souvenir

Just a bloody great big furnace taking up half the basement.

iaink

You must have a really small basement

Piff Poff

Your not wrong, but it is the norm here, the new furnace is half the size of the old one - and what else am I supposed to put in the rather large, rather unattractive room that is in between the family room and the stairs to the garage that houses the spare freezer, the giant washing machine and tumble dryer AND the ironing board? Talking of ironing boards, I have to go use it now