D J wrote:

Hi All,

I just bought one house with Electric Heat in it and was thinking to
convert it to natural gas heat.

House is having four bed rooms, living room, kitchen, one bath room. I
heard from the utility company that the last gentlmen had an average of
200$ in Electric bill for last two years.. Which scared me off.

I live in NJ, north. Would it be a good idea to convert to natural gas
heat? I heard government is giving some subsidies and also loan
programs are available. But, I don't know what is given to whom and
also which companies are good at it.

Any help?

Thanks,
D J

You don't indicate what type of electric heat you have, and this makes a
big difference. Some types of electric heat will be far easier and
therefore less expensive to convert to gas than others. Electric
baseboard heat or electric radiant heat would be the worst to convert
since you essentially have to install everything new. Electric forced
hot air or electric fired hydronic heat would be among the easiest to
convert since much of the existing system could be reused.

Either way you'll still be out more money that you will save for a few
years. You need to get estimates on the cost of the conversion, the best
estimate for the savings and pay back time and then decide if it's a
project you want to tackle right away. If it will cost you $5,000 to do
the conversion and only save you $500 over the heating season (10yr pay
back), you might want to wait a year to put aside some money and get
quotes.

Pete C.