There are many adult communities in this area that were built before natural gas was available to be used as a heat source. Most of the single family homes in the area have since converted from oil heat to gas. But many of the electric heated adult communities still do not have gas in the streets. Therefore they’re still running off the original electric heat system.
And I agree, this is not the most energy efficient heating system that’s available these days. One redeeming feature is that it’s a lot cleaner, your typical first-year gas-fired heating system does tend to circulate a lot of dust. Electric heat does not, in that respect is very similar to hot water baseboard heat, which is the best.
But let’s talk about ways you can mitigate the expenses of an electrically heated house.
First of all, if you don’t use a room why should you heat it? So don’t Your spare bedroom, if you’re not using it shut the door and turn the heat off. When you leave your bedroom in the morning do you keep going back in there? If no, shut the door and turn the heat down.
The same goes for every room in the house. Only heat the rooms that you are in. This will do a fairly decent job of cutting down your electric bill.
But there’s a way that you can reduce your bill an awful lot more. Electric heat is provided by radiators which are mounted along the floor, typically under a window or along exterior walls. You’ve seen them. You know what they look like. But this is old technology. This was probably developed close to a hundred years ago. What happens is you run your electrical current into the unit and you heat a wire that runs the length of the radiator, and the wire is what provides the heat. When you turn off your electric current the heat being radiated by that wire ceases almost immediately.
But there is newer technology which is much more efficient. It’s a similar-looking unit, but instead of heating a wire, you’re heating oil in a sealed tank. You will never need to replace the oil as it is sealed. When you turn the electric on going into the heater, it warms up the oil inside the tank which radiates heat. When you turn off the electric, the heated oil keeps radiating heat for quite some time. This makes it much more efficient to run. Installation is easy if you’re handy, and if not contractors are available to do the work for you. Cost for a typical electrically heated Adult Community Home will probably be about $2,000 or less. Now we spoken to some people who have already installed systems like that, and they report that their electric bill has been cut in half. So this would probably be less than two years pay back on your investment. Quite possibly more.
So don’t let the fact that a house has electric heat automatically be disqualified from your search. It’s not as bad as a lot of people seem to think.