Thoughts on replacing furnace heat source for basement on a 4-Plex multifamily home

[Kwan Suh]

Hi everyone Happy Independence day (almost)!

I wanted to get your thoughts around heating situation that I am facing for my Basement at my 4Plex multi-unit property.

I recently installed electric base board heaters on each of the 4 apartment units at my property due to city enforcing rentals to provide own heating source per individual apartment unit. (I previously had 1 furnace from my basement heating entire 4 units.

After I installed my electric baseboards, the city inspector now is asking me to separate the HVAC ducts across each apartment where there is no shared air flow.

So I called some local HVAC vendors and asked for them to quote me on separating each ducts and every one of the HVAC vendors mentioned that they must remove the old furnace in order to separate the ducts.

Given that now the furnace will be removed and there will be no heat source in the basement, I’m now left to finding a heat source solution for my basement to prevent pipes freezing in winter.

And I was thinking a cost effective way to heat the basement during the winter times would be to buy a bunch of these Econohome 250 Watt Wall Heater Panels that cost around $100 each and plug into an outlet in my basement.

Since I have about 1000 SQ ft space in the basement I was thinking maybe 4 or 6 of these can keep my basement heated to prevent any freezing during the winter times.

The other option was to spend about 1000 on a new small furnace and pay for labor to have HVAC company install it to heat my basement but that would be too expensive.

I’d like to get your thoughts please. Thank you so much!

[Richard F.]

Aloha,

I would think they would be able to simply disconnect/remove the duct runs AT the furnace plenum, and, depending on how large the basement is, add a single or multiple duct runs just for the basement. They may be very short, or even just directly venting from the plenum, depending on the space. They would still need to separate and block off duct runs between units upstairs, as that would be a potential fire chimney, but removing the furnace should have nothing to do with that. Even an old gravity feed "octopus", you just run a couple short ducts toward the far points of the basement to circulate the warm air.

I absolutely would not be using plug in heat panels. You run a great risk of overloading your electrical service if the baseboard heat and panels are not properly separated by multiple circuits. You do NOT want your basement pipes to freeze, so you should also have, in addition to  basement heat, some electric pipe heat cables for the REALLY cold weather that I've heard about up your way...