[tigerlily]

I think I remember that someone put in heat and insulation in their house as soon as they bought it. I'm wondering how this was done, general costs, etc. I'm hearing snow and high on 9 degrees!

[clg]

We added heat right after we bought our house. There are a lot of options here ranging from 7k-20k+ depends on the house, where you are located, type of fuel, etc. Insulation is tougher, we have it in the walls but have vaulted wood ceilings so can't do it there. Don't really know what it costs.

It is very hard to do any sort of estimate without looking at a specific house. It is quite possible to have a warm house here though and places built since mid 70's may well have insulation already, that was when ours was built.

We budgeted something like 20-25k for heat if we could not find one with central heat. We also did not look at character houses because we felt they would cost too much to bring up to where we wanted them. As it turned out, our house was about as difficult to heat as they get. We added a boiler/radiators and it cost about 16k for a fairly large 5bd house. It will cost about 2500 a year to heat the place, that is with diesel at its current price. My wife and daughter stay home so we run the heat a bit more because of that.

If your floorplan is right a woodburner will keep a house very warm, they just take more work. We have a fire we use that heats parts of the house but it is nice to wake up to a warm hous without having to get the fire going!

Hope that helps!