In article . com, ransley wrote:
On Sep 7, 6:05 pm, (Doug Miller) wrote:
In article . com, komobu
wrote:
I am buying a house for rental property. It currently has a 2 year old
13 seer 3.5 ton Carrier Central AC System that is self contained and
sits outside. There is a huge duct that comes out of the unit and
enters the crawl space and cools the house.

As for heat, the house was made in 65 and has electric base board heat
and I would like to convert to gas forced air, or maybe even a boiler
system for water that heats the floors.

Why? It's a rental unit. You're not going to live there. Why do you care what
the heating system is?

Retrofitting a hot-water radiant floor heating system into a house that
wasn't
designed for it will be very, very expensive. Hot water heat is wonderful --
but if you're going to retrofit that into a house, do it to _your_own_ house,
not a rental.

What are my options?

That depends a lot on what type of energy sources are available at the
property. For example, if there are no gas mains in the neighborhood, then
putting in a natural gas furnace is obviously not an option.

If I was
to install a natural gas heater, could I hook into the AC Duct under
the house?

Yes, but there are several questions you need answers to first:
1) is natural gas available at the house?
2) is there a place to put the furnace?
3) is there a place to *vent* the furnace?
4) can you recover the additional cost?

I hate to think what the electric heat is going to cost
with base board.

Why do you care what electric heat is going to cost, if the tenant pays the
bill?

Any suggestions would be welcome.

My principal suggestion is to leave it alone. You're probably never going to
recover the additional cost.

A gas furnace would be best and easy to install.

Garbage. You don't know that. What if natural gas isn't even available in the
neighborhood? What if the house has no place where a gas furnace can be
installed or vented?

Ducts should be
sealed with mastic and well insulated. You should care about heating
cost, Electric is more expensive by a large margin in most areas, if
utilities are to high tennants wont stay, it also limits what you can
ask in rent.

Needing to recover the cost of a new heating system also places a lower limit
on what he *needs* to get in rent.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.