On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 20:52:18 -0500, someone wrote:

In other words..... given that electric heat costs more.... can one
finesses it more by zone heating and other controls and save overall
over gas?

No.

It takes a certain number of btus to heat a given area to a given
temperature. Electric resistance btus are more expensive than fuel
burning btus. The only way this seems to make sense, is similar to
the analagous artificial argument made for gas fireplaces vs. central
heat - someone compares heating the whole house, to only heating a
small portion of the house. Of course heating a smaller area is less
money, if all else is equal.

If you compared the same sized zone, it would still be cheaper to heat
it with a properly sized fuel burning appliance. This can become
ridiculous if one defines down the zone so much that there is no
furnace or boiler that small - and set up a hypothetical to make the
electric resistance come out on top - but in any "normal" application,
the fuel burning btus are cheaper.

BTW, there is another issue - personally, I find that forced air heat
is poor from a comfort standpoint - either blows hot or cold. That is
why I prefer baseboard. But baseboard doesn't have to be electric.
Comparing electric baseboard to fuel burning forced air is therefore
also not comparable - you should compare to electric forced air, which
has been done but is very rare by itself, but IS what happens when a
heat pump system has to switch to its electric backup.

-v.