In the summer of 2016, I built a new house for my family, but the team of workers quickly exceeded the budget that was allocated for the project, so we decided to install as a heating source only an electrical system based on cables mounted under the floor.

The company that installed the heating system told me that even if it is a heating system that uses only electricity, the energy bill during the winter will be quite small, around $ 200 per month.

During October 2016, temperatures started to drop, so we decided to use the new underfloor heating system.

Everything went normal in the first two or three days (the system needed 24 hours to reach the required temperature inside the house – very low efficiency), but on the fourth day, I realized that the electricity consumption is very high.

Checking the light meter, I realized that the system had a consumption of around 200 kWh in 24 hours, to heat only one floor of the house (about 100 square meters).

After three months of use, I decided to stop the heating system because my electric bill was so high (I paid $ 2,300 for three months of heating).

In January 2017, I bought a fairly large wood stove that easily managed to heat the first floor of the house.

The firewood consumption was decent, so the price paid to heat the first floor of the house for a whole month was only around $ 150 (much lower than using the underfloor heating system).

Using the wood stove was not a very clean activity, not to mention the presence of smoke (from time to time) inside the house.

However, using wood and wood pellets to heat the first floor of the house helped me save some money for a better heating system.

During February 2017, outside temperatures were very low -27 degrees Celsius (-16.6 F) and the wood stove was somewhat overwhelmed by freezing temperatures.

During those freezing days in February, a friend told me that I need to use natural gas central heating to heat my whole house and keep energy bills at a decent level.

The heating system that uses natural gas heats the house through radiators mounted in each room of the house, so not only on one floor of the house.

I presented the documentation required by the gas supplier, but they immediately told me that I must wait around 9 months for them to connect me because the area where the house is located is not connected to any gas pipeline.

I visited a neighboring house that used a central heating system that ran on natural gas, and they even showed me their energy bill during the freezing month of February 2017.

Using natural gas, he was able to heat a house that was roughly the same size as mine, and in February 2017 he paid an energy bill of just $ 500.

Using the underfloor mounted cable-based heating system, I paid around $ 800 per month to heat only one floor of my house (half the house), while my neighbor using natural gas paid only $ 500 to heat entire house (two stories) during the frosty month of February 2017.

Today I am still waiting for them to connect me to the gas service and I am quite worried because winter is very close and I do not want to live the experience of last winter again.