Efficient Heating

tommy, did you price out how expensive these systems are?

just spoke to a coworker who went with forced air in his new build instead of hot water system some 10+ yrs ago when he bought. he regrets saving that $7K because he already paid more then that in heating bills.

in the northeast, nothing beats steam/hot water. using electricity will always cost more. unless you go green and dig down couple of hundred or thousand feet down to get the stable temperature air, electric heaters, no matter how efficient, will end up costing more.

Nuke-u-ler.

A lot will depend on the price of natural gas, the price of electricity, and also the climate over time.

We have a heat pump with aux heat in our apartment. It seems to actually be more efficient than a gas heater during the milder months, when no aux heat is needed, but less efficient during very cold (consistently below freezing) spells. Whenever the aux heat light goes on, I envision setting fire to a pile of money.

tommy2tone, I think you're looking at buying a building, no? Could you retrofit the building so that each unit has its own heating system? If so, I would do that. Stick the utility cost on the tenant. Also saves you the headache of hearing it's too cold/hot all the time.

my 2 bits and a true story.
in 2010 I bought a large loft.I installed double windows mainly for soundproofing (cityproof).
the side effect of this, combined with a weirdly warm winter, is that we have turned the heat on less than 10 days since winter started. sometimes we turn it on for an hour and the heat stays in for hours.
the average cost including gas and electricity ( to include WD,oven,fridge, computers,tv,etc..)is $100/month.
And the place is silent.

Midtowner
You touch on the most efficient method for heating any apartment,and that is, keeping the heat in the apartment.
A well insulated home with electric heat will be cheaper than a poorly insulated home having a team of chinese child laborers feeding a pot belly stove.

I actually avoided buying a new construction condo because it was heated with a Japanese ductless system. Too many reviews online (and manufacturer websites) talked about how these units actually stop working once the outside air temperature drops below freezing. Apparently there are a few units that are still functional at these temps, but in cold NYC i wanted to avoid the whole thing.

Heat pumps using external air as a heat source will be inefficient for heating anywhere in the northeast. Indeed, when the outside temperature drops below freezing, the heat source switches to electric resistance heat, which is much, much costlier than gas heat. If it is an option, ground-source heat (drawing up underground water from a well) would be more efficient, but not significantly less expensive than gas.

We had blown-in cellulose insulation done over the summer in an old wood frame family property in the northeast & what a difference. As somebody here has said, keeping the cold out & the heat in is really the key.