:) thanks for your input.


As for a renovation of a crawl space to a basement it sounds like it would cost over 190k

Dustwork though is less expensive so it's something to think about.

If this place has aluminum wiring because it was built in the 1970's I think that will be my deal breaker.

Only a home inspection would be able to show that but the way the sales are going things are going without conditional sale.

Baseboard heating and gas heating are completely unconnected.

You can have baseboard heat with either an oil or gas furnace. Or you could have electric baseboard heat. Conversely, you could have any heat source with radiators or forced air too.

So, what are you really asking?

Sounds like our house. Our whole subdivision (Toronto) was built in the early 1970's with electric baseboard heat and aluminum wiring. Electricity was inexpensive then, with subsidies to builders to build all-electric homes. Our street did not have gas installed until the early 1990's.

Once there was gas on the street, we had ducts retrofitted into our 2 story house, as did pretty well all our neighbors, for a forced air gas system. The furnace in the basement has ducts that go through the attached garage into the upstairs bedrooms above and near it. A big duct takes up half of one of the bedroom closets, goes up into the attic, and back down to the bedrooms on the non-garage side of the house, with ceiling ducts there. The basement was unfinished, so ducts run everywhere in the basement ceiling to the main floor rooms. I can't recall how much it cost but it repaid quickly. The ducts lose some heat in the garage but overall the house is comfortably heated. We had the air conditioner converted at that time to use the new ducts, instead of the old Space Pack system we had.

I guess you could also get a hydronic gas system with water pipes in baseboard heaters. My parents have this in their home. Very clean, with comfortable even heat, but I don't know anything about how this would be to retrofit.

As far as aluminum wiring, I know of no-one who has had it replaced in our neighborhood, and no-one has had any problems. My husband worked in the electrical industry at the time so he knew that aluminum is not an issue if done properly.

Re-reading your original post, if it is open concept and there are rooms upstairs, you have to figure out how to get the heating ducts to the upstairs rooms. You may be missing walls where you would otherwise hide the ducts. If the duct work needs to be installed in a crawl space, there may also be extra costs. I'd get a quote before you offer.

I really need to assess where the crawl space and water heater is as well as how much space has been provided to that area. If they are old, or brand new. If they have a natural gas line running to the house already or not because it looks like gas is running in the area. I wonder how much a hook up will be. Here are some images of what it looks like

Oops forgot a pic