I am purchasing a just under 1000 sq ft home that has baseboard heat. if this heat isn't sufficient what can I replace it With.what would be a estimated price be on central air and heat? how efficient are them infrared heaters?

do you have natural gas?

no I dont

If it was me I'd look at a wood boiler but that's a lot of work with getting the wood and all but you might look into floor heating they say it's sweet heat. Go to Central Boiler they have diagrams that might help. If not your talking LP and all new ductworks for the whole house.

If you have a shed you can heat that with a 2nd pump on a wood boiler it's just a pump and radiators along the wall and your set no fans needed. They have room radiators also that's looks easier then setting up floor heat that looks intense with all of the fittings/lines.

Most baseboard heat work well, if not keeping, up put in a bigger boiler.

Do you get long cold spells in TN.?

Here in the mountains it gets cold for a while January and February are the coldest. Not as bad as the northeast but it gets cold.

What do you consider cold? below 20 degrees!

You could always use and electric heater as an axillary heat source since it's only a few months. This would also give you some time to figure out if you need something different.

yes is baseboard heat ok during them temps?

It depends on how big the boiler is and how much baseboard you have. If it is not enough but close, I would install electric baseboard heat. The boiler will handle most days and if it gets really, really cold, use the electric heat too. Electric heat is expensive to run but very cheap to install. I wouldn't heat a whole house with it but as supplemental heat, I think it's an economical choice. Even heat pumps (very efficient but expensive to install) use electric heat strips for the days it's too cold for heat pumps to work well.

For cooling, google "mini split". They're relatively cheap and for 1,000 square feet should work fine. You can even get mini splits that offer heat and cooling and you can choose which to use for heat.

Estimated prices here: electric baseboard heat, just enough to help out the regular heat: $1,000 -$2,000 installed by an electrician depending on how much of it you need.
Minisplit (cooling only) installed by HVAC contractor: $4,000. With heat (heat pump): $5,500 installed.

If you do either option, post here to let us know what it did cost.

electric baseboard heat is what this house has. Am I going to need to add some other heat source?

The electric company should be bale to tell you what it cost to run that place for at least the last year. Here our monthly bill shows it on a bar graph.

Electric baseboard heat is about the most expensive there is out there. Our small place we live in is heated with a ventless propane wall mounted heater. Coldest I have seen since here was 5 above for one night and it kept up OK. A ceiling fan to help move the heat around makes a lot of difference as well.

If you have , baseboard heat already installed, Has the folks you bought from been using it, and been happy with it. I have electric baseboards in our house. We are in Canada so probably colder for longer. If a room seems to cool, you can replace a heater with a longer, larger one , usually without rewiring. .You can shut back heat to rooms you are not using, shut the door.. I am an electrician. I would certainly , first look to see how well your house is insulated. We have 6 inch batts in ceiling with an additional 6 inches blown insulation on top of that. If you do siding improvements, add 2 inch rigid insulation to , outside and a vapor barrier, before your regular siding. Make sure that house is well sealed around foundation, spray foam works well.. If there is no heat in basement , add at least 4 inches to floor., or install a fan forced heater. . Insulation is expensive, but, you pay for it once. It will pay you back both summer and winter , from then on. . Just my 2 cents worth. Hope it works well for you. old 243

You need another heat source. Unless TN is a magic place sometimes the electricity will be off. Like after an ice storm. Total electric is nice till a drunk in a camper runs through the fence around a transfer station or squirrel commits suicide. Your going to have to decide whether to get a small propane tank and a ventless heater or two like Pete suggested or some triple wall and install a wood stove. If somebody around there will deliver tax free red diesel you could also get a heating oil stove. Kerosene stoves work good too. buy 30 gallons of kerosene and a portable ventless kerosene stove. No way I would depend only on electricity. Seen the lights off here for over a week a few years back. I keep colman lanterns and a small generator. Leave the doors on the fridge and freezers closed. Run them a couple hours a day. Don't need a big expensive generator or a lot of gas. I have a couple colman cook stoves as well. Never needed them in the house but they run on the same naptha lantern gas . You just never know what will happen.

The one thing you can be sure of where electricity is concerned is that sometimes it goes off. Especially if your in a rural area.

While I'm thinking about it buy a few those gallon jugs of water to keep handy if your on a well. Well pumps don't work when the lights are out either.

trapper Al, Something I didn't mention, in my post. A rough rule of thumb, if you have sufficient insulation is 10 watts of baseboards for each square foot of floor area. A 100 sf room would require , a 1000 watt heater. .Your 1000 foot house, needs about 10 kw of heat. There will be a lot of diversity, they won't all be on at the same time. You might figure about 75%. The amperage load of that at 240 volts , would be around 40 amps. I agree you should have a good sized generator for outages. If you have access to wood, a woodstove is a good , heat source, I burn wood all winter. as well.. Old243

Heat pump can now run at -14 degrees F. Are you handy. If so you can put in a Unico High Velocity system it’s uses 21/2” round flexible ducts off larger round pipe, it’s easy to install. You can buy them with the additional electric heating coil or water coil and hookup to a boiler. A pellet stove in the basement would easily heat it if you leave the basement door open. I would add the optional hard wired thermostat and run a thermostat wire from the living space to the pellet stove in the basement. A pellet stove uses very little electricity and would require only a very small generator. I used a pellet stove here in VT for heating a house same size as yours. Keeping it at 70 degrees F used about three to of pellets at $250 a ton cleaning the stove every two weeks. 20 minutes to clean. I bought the PelPro 55 thousand BTU stove it’s known as the cheap Charlie. Cost me $1200 for it and $200 for the hard wire thermostat. For the cost and easy install I would recommend it.

Two options in my opinion. Heat pump air handler in. The attic or basement. With ductwork. Solves the ac and heat issue

Or mini splits aka ductless heat pump units. Solves the heat and ac issue. Solves the issues of not having places for ductwork

Putting a boiler in would cost a boatload of money and still not get you any closer to ever having air conditioning.

When the wind blows I fill the bath tub up with water because we have a well. I have a generator for other things. Can always flush the toilet with a bucket, LOL