Do you use natural gas or oil? Is it central heating, or separate heating in each room?My natural gas bill (for central heating and to heat the water in water tank) is about $110 monthly for a 2400 sq ft house, not counting the electricity to run the furnace motor, as electricity is also used to light up the house, power up the tv and computer, etc. How much roughly is the heating cost in Germany?My house in canada has central heating using a furnace burning naturual gas, with an electric motor fan that blows the heated air from the furnace to different parts of the house through the heat ducts, while also sucking the air from different parts of houe back to the furnace thru the quot;cold air returnquot; to re-heat.I had a German guest some time back and she was curious why there is a noise from the furnace motor in my house basement. She came from Moenchengladbach, Germany.
We agreed on the fuel left in the cellar by the previous occupants as being two and a half tons by a visual estimate. We had two young children both pre-school needing a warm home and making lots of laundry work to do which used a lot of hot water. Left there three years later with a warm house every day with temperatures going down to minus 15C (5F) for weeks through the winter and the coke allowance building up every month that was delivered last day of the month every month for three years with half quantities
Often, it's radiant heat. Water or ethylene glycol is heated in a 'boiler', each room had one or more thin panel radiators that provide heat. The heat can be adjusted by opening or closing a valve on each radiator. Modern systems include room thermostats, occupancy sensors and boilers that attain 97% efficiency using boilers not much larger than a shoe box. The only noise is a circulator pump. The fuel is commonly electricity or gas Forced air heat is not as common in Europe
Central air heating is pretty much unknown in Germany. As to what is used - depends on the age of the building, or rather its last renovation, since under current law any major renovation also requires an upgrade of the thermal efficiency of the house to current standards. What I know of: - Wood stoves in each room (my sister lives in such a house, although she uses electricity now to heat up the water for the shower) - oil stoves in each room, either with central oil supply or locally through a can - central heating (i.e. one burner for the whole house or flat), using - oil (from a tank in the basement) - gas, either from a pipeline to the house or an outdoor tank - wood, either as logs, chips or pellets, in either case with mostly automated feed - district heating with a heat exchanger in the basement - power-heat-cogeneration (usually for apartment blocks or a small neighbourhood) - ground or water based heat pumps (air based heat pumps are known, but uncommon) - heat distribution through either water-filled radiators in each room or water pipes laid inside the floor (water pipes in the wall are possible, too, but pretty uncommon) - no dedicated heating (Passivhaus, Zero energy house, plus energy house), but usually in this case central air supply with a waste air heat exchanger and electric hot water boilers. We are using a ground-based heat pump for a ~100 m^2 house, and I pay ~600 Euros per year for the electricity to run the heat pump (and again about the same for electricity for everything else, there are seperate meters for the heat pump and the rest of the house).
