Sports for kids? All-electric houses? (Fishers, Noblesville: apartments, mover, how much)

[newmover17]

We are finally ready to decide on a house. There's one in Fishers and one in Noblesville we love. Our kids are in 6th grade and under. Which town would be better for athletics? I know both schools systems are great, but which town would they have more opportunities for sports? They're pretty average athletes, I don't have the money to shell out for club/travel teams. I don't want them to not be able to play softball or football if they can't make the team.


Also, the one house is all electric and only has a heat pump. Thoughts? Will the house be warm enough in the winter?

[ischyros]

Originally Posted by newmover17

We are finally ready to decide on a house. There's one in Fishers and one in Noblesville we love. Our kids are in 6th grade and under. Which town would be better for athletics? I know both schools systems are great, but which town would they have more opportunities for sports? They're pretty average athletes, I don't have the money to shell out for club/travel teams. I don't want them to not be able to play softball or football if they can't make the team.


Also, the one house is all electric and only has a heat pump. Thoughts? Will the house be warm enough in the winter?

I can't answer your first question but I'll try my best with the second. We live in Fishers and have all electric with a heat pump. Our house is about 1700 sq ft. Last winter was brutal. I'm not sure where you're moving from but we had one of the coldest winters ever here. So our heater ran a lot. Our electric bill topped out in February around $400 for the month. Typically it runs around $250 for January and February. Spring and fall, though, it dramatically falls to around $100-110 and then around $130-140 during the summer depending how much we run the air conditioner. Because of how crazy the bill could get in the winter, we opted to go with the budget plan from Duke so our electric bill is the same every month. It means we're paying more in the summer but much less in the winter. It keeps the house warm. We have one corner bedroom that has a hard time getting warm but we haven't figured out if it's something to do with the ducts or the furnace itself. We had our whole system replaced a year ago (with a heat pump you have to replace both the inside and outside unit) and that room still struggles to stay warm. We put digital thermometer in there and on the coldest nights it will drop to 65 degrees. The rest of the house is fine, though. The old unit was new with the house (1994) and would run constantly when the temperature outside was 20 degrees or colder. The new unit seems to do much better.

The main thing I hate about a heat pump is the outside unit runs all year, so even in the winter when you're running the heater, the outside unit runs so you need to make sure it stays clear of snow. We usually don't get enough snow to make it a problem, but you never know.

[newmover17]

Originally Posted by ischyros

I can't answer your first question but I'll try my best with the second. We live in Fishers and have all electric with a heat pump. Our house is about 1700 sq ft. Last winter was brutal. I'm not sure where you're moving from but we had one of the coldest winters ever here. So our heater ran a lot. Our electric bill topped out in February around $400 for the month. Typically it runs around $250 for January and February. Spring and fall, though, it dramatically falls to around $100-110 and then around $130-140 during the summer depending how much we run the air conditioner. Because of how crazy the bill could get in the winter, we opted to go with the budget plan from Duke so our electric bill is the same every month. It means we're paying more in the summer but much less in the winter. It keeps the house warm. We have one corner bedroom that has a hard time getting warm but we haven't figured out if it's something to do with the ducts or the furnace itself. We had our whole system replaced a year ago (with a heat pump you have to replace both the inside and outside unit) and that room still struggles to stay warm. We put digital thermometer in there and on the coldest nights it will drop to 65 degrees. The rest of the house is fine, though. The old unit was new with the house (1994) and would run constantly when the temperature outside was 20 degrees or colder. The new unit seems to do much better.

The main thing I hate about a heat pump is the outside unit runs all year, so even in the winter when you're running the heater, the outside unit runs so you need to make sure it stays clear of snow. We usually don't get enough snow to make it a problem, but you never know.

Would you let the heat pump scare you away from purchasing the home if you had to do it over again? Everything else about the home we absolutely love, it's just this no gas thing that is making us question this.

The home we're looking at is a Beazer built, "green" and super efficient home. I looked up the power bills, and they're close to what we pay now here in NW Indiana.

[ischyros]

No, I wouldn't let a heat pump be a deal breaker if it was a house I loved in a neighborhood I loved. If I could take or leave the house, then maybe. But if I really liked the house, there would have to be more wrong with it. Anything with electric heat, whether heat pump or not, is going to have much higher electric bills in winter than summer. I learned that living in apartments. On the plus side, very little carbon monoxide concerns since there are no gas lines coming into the house.

[rrah]

The schools that serve Fishers are pretty large. Because Noblesville is smaller, I suspect your children would have a better chance of making the teams in Noblesville. That said, I know several people that went to high school at Hamilton SE and Fishers. All were on the football team. I don't know if they were any good at playing or the team just needed warm bodies. Football teams are always so large.

Softball might be a different story. Unfortunately these days it's almost a requirement that one do club or travel teams in smaller team sports such as softball, soccer, baseball, etc. to play in high school and even middle school sometimes.