Yeah, I wouldn't try heating the floor in a way that would obviously make it burn. Just enough that your feet are comfortable, which in turn will make the rest of the home comfortable as well, as the heat radiates up. And you would probably want to diffuse the heat in some fashion across the breadth of the floor. Maybe with some kind of ceramic or tile, over which you might put wood or whatever you feel is decorative.

Kudos on spelling "storey" correctly, but I was thinking less in terms of "burning" the subfloor and finish floor, more in terms of whether that amount of direct dry heat cycling on and off all the time would cause the floor to dry out, expand and contract, warp, damage the finish floor, etc.

A nice big woodstove is probably in my future.

I would think that the best thing to do is to just insulate the hell out of the floor from the basement side (obviously). Well placed area rugs work nicely, even on "very pretty" hardwood.

It's a shame you don't have a nice big old-fashioned wood fireplace.

Then I'd be able to tell you how to determine the difference between cats and dogs.... ;)

They now requrie stoves to produces less than 7.5 grams of particulates per hour. It's a standard that can be met with a fairly minor design change.

My current home has an ordinary wood fireplace. We don't use it much because it's as old as the house itself (75+ years) and sends all of the heat straight up the chimney. If we were staying in this house I'd consider a wood stove insert.

The house we are attempting to buy has electric heat so I'm thinking a wood stove is in our future. However it is an extremely well insulated house so I can't really count on a lot of heat going through the floor from the finished basement to the main level. I wonder if convection through the stairway will be enough.

Convection from the stairway will not be enough. In fact, you'll hardly notice it at all.

Have you considered infrared heating for the floor/carpets?

Does that involve hacking apart the floors? First I've got to actually buy the house, then we'll think about what it's going to take to bypass the electric radiators. I'm going to shy away from something that involves hacking apart the floors and still requires electricity.

If I can't heat the whole house with a wood fire, my next choice would be a two zone mini split.

Infrared heating works just like electric light, only in the IR region. Typically they are ceiling mounted and heat the area below them. They do *not* heat the air.

Septic inspection for the new place was completed yesterday. This system has soooo much more capacity than the one at our current home -- they've got a 1000 gallon tank and a 1000 gallon overflow tank and a 1000 gallon pump chamber feeding 375 linear feet of drainfield, with a designated location for 375 additional linear feet of expansion drainfield.

All of this for a 1600 sqft, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house.

We're signing the contract today. All that's left now is for all of the mortgages on both sides to clear. Those of you who are willing to do so, please pray for those hurdles to be cleared.

IG - did you get a roof inspection and a termite inspection? As far as I know (unless this has changed) the mortgage company/bank will want those two certs before they will commit to lending.

All required inspections have been completed (by the way they're not termites anymore, now they're the politically correct "wood destroying insects"). The deal almost went south last night because my attorney insisted upon a contingency for the sale of my existing home, based on our financial position.
Miraculously, the sellers accepted it without a quarrel and we signed the contract this morning.

It's been a f***ing roller coaster ride, and I'm not assuming it's over until we're clear to close on both sides. And I really do want to get to the point where I can bask in the joy of looking forward to our new home, instead of constantly worrying about the next thing that could go wrong.

Tomorrow is the appraisal on our current home. I've heard of those causing problems too. Hopefully this one won't be an issue because we are selling a well maintained home at a fair price and the buyers put 10% down (actually they're downsizing, so hopefully they're putting more than 10% down from a mortgage point of view).

Ahhh yes... State-Contingent Contracts are a Good Thing(tm)! Congrats.

State machine, state machine! :) Yes we're protected, but the most-upstream deal is the one that I know the least about, and if it goes south it now affects four different parties. Ugh.

screw this, I'm getting into real-estate

oops...