I have a home with baseboard heating in the basement. Last year, a pipe burst, but since we didn’t use the basement much, we sealed it off rather than fix it immediately at the time.
Now, we have turned the basement into a permanent room for my oldest daughter and a playroom. It’s winter now, and there needs to be heat. A plumber quoted us a price of $600 to fix the baseboard heating system (it’s not just the burst pipes that needs replacing, but also a re-circulator). But maybe we’d be fine with a simple room heater in those rooms, but I know that using electricity for heat is very power-intensive, maybe that will eliminate any savings? On top of that, there are a bunch of different types of room heaters, I really have no idea which type would be most advisable to buy, from an energy-efficiency standpoint.
If you are going to repair it sooner or later then I would repair it sooner rather than later.
All the time you are using electricity to heat you are losing money.
If it was a long term thing then I would use a heat pump but using space heaters is a lousy way to heat a room.
On the other hand it is extremely cheap to buy a space heater and see how much power you need to heat that space. It will depend on the size and insulation but be ready to run a couple space heaters non-stop. The space heaters will cost nothing in comparison with the energy used.
I used to live in a very small apartment (about 550 sq. ft.) in the New York City area, and the heating system sucked big time. The heater was a window unit heat pump for AC and heat. It was loud and blew out lukewarm air, which was not comfortable on a cold night. And if it got really cold, it could not keep up very well.
I finally invested in something like this. It looks like a small radiator, but it is electric. It heats some sort of oil which circulates around the thing, and it throws out a good bit of heat. I liked that it was a very consistent heat with no blowing of air. I had tried a few of the typical space heaters, and they did not do a good job.
The apartment was usually heated well with just the one electric radiator, and I didn’t notice an increase in my utility bill.
It’s not really below ground. It’s below sidewalk level, at the bottom of our driveway, the main house has about 8 steps up from the sidewalk to get to the entrance.
Keep safety in mind.
If a heater with a fan in it tips over, gets put too close to something that can burn, or a piece of clothing gets dropped on it, there can a fire.
The oil bath heaters have a thermostat in them. If a coat is dropped on top of them the heater will not get hot enough to cause a fire. They also have a tip switch.