HVAC? Add central heat to a house

I know there was a thread the other day about HVAC, but my situation is different and i dont want to cunt up the other thread.

i just bought a house here in bozeman. its pretty small, 950 sq ft, but for heat only has two little gas stoves. the house was remodeled in 1997 and seems to be pretty tight. since the house is small, the stoves take up a fair bit of room and i'd rather have central heat.

ideally, i'd like to add a gas fired forced warm air furnace. i'm probably a year out from making the change, but i want to start figuring it out now.

what would something like this typically cost? is it possible to do yourself? i've done some work with gas before (installed a shop heater), but that was at an old ski lodge, not my house.

Is there a basement or crawlspace for duct work?

yeah, more of a wriggle space. but it's called a crawl space. there's one section that was dug out deeper and lined with cement that's kind of a bath tub for the water heater. under about a third of the house the crawl space is about 5', in the rest it's about 1.5'

Should be able to do something, either in the "basement" with duct work out in the crawlspace... or even in the attic, assuming you have a pitched roof of some sort?

Probably a job a very handy person COULD do? But I'd personally spend my time and effort getting a larger number of quotes for a reasonable bid, instead of trying to become a HVAC and metal worker dude. For that square footage, a standard efficiency forced air furnace system should be fine. The payback on the cost increase for a high efficiency unit would likely be a long long time... Would you be looking to have a central air conditioning installed too? That's a whole other skill set... Hey, are heat pumps the norm there, or too cold and full on furnaces standard like we have here in the land of cheese?

Either way, remember that the RETURN air duct system is just as important as the feeding duct system! Without an organized system to get airflow moving there and back, you'd find rooms don't heat/cool once their door is closed.

Depending on your geographic location you should look into a conditioned crawl space. The crawl space walls are insulated and the earthen floor is sealed with heavy duty poly sheeting, and foundation vents are closed permanently. This in effect makes the entire crawl space a plenum that is heated and cooled along with the rest of the conditioned living space and makes for a very nice and comfy set up. The conditioned crawl also elimenates mold and mildew for allergy sufferers.

If I was building a new home I wouldn't do it any other way. The crawl becomes a much cleaner space and your water heater should benefit as well in all seasons.

I wouldn't go heat pump in Bozeman.

I would be worried about using forced air. It will suck all the moisture out of the air and your going to have such low humidity your going to wake up with a bloody nose. If its that small why not look into electric baseboard ?

it depends on the style of the place, but I saw pics of this place (pic) and really liked the way they used loft-style exposed ducting. Would beat the hell out of cutting holes in your floors and crawling around under your house too

I just put a new furnace in a home that is 990 sqft that I am flipping. It costs $1300 installed, but the duct work was already there.

Consider a gas Rinnai wall unit. A pretty small one will easily handle 900 square feet and with the vast amounts you save on not installing ductwork, you can do something cool to your house.

I installed my own central heat AND air with a LOT of help. I would not consider it a DIY project unless you have assistance from someone who is in the business.

First of all, the system should be designed by someone who knows what there doing... duct size, register locations, return location, all need to be properly placed for the system to work right. IMO, the design should be done by a professional - period.

There is a fair amount of sheetmetal work that is better left to a sheetmetal shop. Assuming you can get your sheetmetal bent up - and the design provided - and help from someone who knows how to run duct work to code... then go for it! But in all reality, it's just not really a DIY job unless you have the hookups for people in the industry.

I got cost on my duct work, sheetmetal work, heating unit, and condenser and I paid roughly $4500 for materials (my house is only 1100 sq ft). The guy that hooked me up indicated that for a job like mine he would charge about $9000.

Have fun....