Our house will be about 30 squares. We are building with a volume builder
The commonly used areas will be 3 bedrooms (the 4th will be used as an internal shed - so it has potential to be a bedroom later if needed)
Open kitchen/meals/family
adjoining rumpus off the family room that will have glass panel doors
we will also have another living room which initially at least will not have much use. May be a future office or possibly a large bedroom/retreat for aging parents, but it's main purpose initially will be to house the step-kids (bedroom and living in one) and other guests when they are about - realisitically only a few months of use spread over of the year
added to this is that I and my daughter get very cold over winter - her lips have turned blue this season already and of course the boys in the house are hot and walk around wearing singlets in the middle of winter
So the question is how to heat?
Standard with our builder is a 3.5 star Bonair ducted heater with no zones
$1200 extra - 4.3 star Brivis or 5 star Bonair - not zoned (definantly go a better heater)
for $2200 we can have the 5star Bonair and 2 zones (not so sure)
it takes a lot more (sorry, I don't have a figure) to have the house fully zoned, which is what I was really after but money isn't unlimited. And for the extra costs you start wondering for the additional amount could you install PVs instead and reduce your footprint that way?
If we were to have 2 zones where would they be? Living rooms and bedrooms (which would mean all living rooms are being heated, even if you are only using the kitchen in the morning)? Or leave heating out of the bedrooms and have it just in the kitchen/family and rumpus? I certainly want heating of some sort in the Master bedroom though. And what about that additional living room (which does face north with good windows)?
We do have a Noirot electric panel heater (and an assortment of other portable electric heaters)
http://www.noirot.com.au/noirot_products.html
and it works a treat - I think it would heat up the additional living room comfortably, and it's portable. It cost us about $300 but I really don't know how much power it pulls. I remember it was sold to us as an energy efficient model (compared to other electric options).