The heating system you ultimately choose for your home is one of the most significant investments you will ever make, and it’s not something you should proceed to do, uninformed. You may be designing and building your dream home, or perhaps you have had to face the fact that the heater that came with your house has provided its last measure of warmth for your home. As these issues most prevalently present mid-winter, you are probably pressed to find a suitable replacement quickly. In contrast to what many homeowners believe, there are several issues to think about in shopping for just the right heater for any home. First, obviously is going to be the actual amount of heat you need, followed by the cost of operation. Next, it’s good to weigh the environmental aspect in terms of footprints left from the different heating options currently available on the market.
How are You Insulated?
Before you even start to look at heating options, it’s important to understand about insulation and how it can greatly influence the type and size of heating system that your home will actually need, in order to stay comfortably warm in the chilliest temps. While it might be a bit of an unplanned for expense, over the long haul, it will definitely be a significant source of money savings, not only on the up front expense of a new heater, but also on the volume of work your heater will have to do to sustain pleasant heating temps.
Size Matters
In terms of understanding the most appropriate size of heating system for your home (and to avoid buying too much,) it’s recommended that this is one area in which the advice of a professional will prove beneficial…especially when that professional is not a full time salesperson for a particular store or brand, but a full time technician or repair specialist. These folks can provide you with their experiences on the most and least frequent systems that break down and need repair. You can find calculators that will help you determine the size of heater for your home space. these are easily found in many places, and even from searches on the Internet. Be sure to compare two together, to check for similar findings.
What’s it Going to Cost Me, to Run this New Heating System?
There are many graphs available that will break down the various heater sizes and types, and show their associated running costs. Now keep in mind that if you have adequately insulated your home, you will be saving substantially off of what your less insulated neighbors will be paying. Another contributing factor is the current fuel price and how articulately you set and use your heater.
How Different Heating Systems Have Different Environmental Impacts
If you, like most consumers today, are striving to minimize the harmful impact that everything we do has upon the environment, look for heating options that use renewable energy to operate, and also produce less greenhouse gas emissions in operating. Once you choose the type of heating system for your home, select the most efficient model in that category. Learn how you can most effectively and efficiently operate your heater. Your owner’s manual is a good place to start, but check customer reviews and non-biased industry publications. The manner in which you operate your heater can have a significant influence on your monthly bill.
Where you Plan on Heating and Level of Heat You Will Need are Important Considerations
There are more than a few homes where there are certain areas or rooms that are typically cut off from the rest of the house and the full introduction of heat into those rooms is reduced by closing off tll the vents of those rooms and spaces. While you may not typically use these segregated areas all the time, you do want to retain the ability to provide heat to those spaces while sustaining the level of heating comfort to the rest of your home at the same time. Make sure the heater you buy can handle the whole of your home’s interior, whenever you want it to.
In Looking For Efficiency With Price
For rooms that you regularly use many design innovations have been made to improve the way they all operate, both effectively and cheaply. Clean, effective forms of heating include heat pumps and gas, like, ENERGY STAR qualified heat pumps and high star-rated, flued gas heaters. Heating with electricity is generally considerably less expensive to purchase and install, especially when you don’t have gas lines already running to your house. These heaters are more expensive to run Electricity can cost as much as twice as much to operate as gas. Note that fuel costs can vary greatly depending on location, retailer and plan. Natural gas pricing includes a portion of fixed charges assuming a total annual gas consumption of 7000 kWh. Actual cost depends on your tariff and actual total gas consumption.
Which Type of Heat System is Best for My Home?
In the process of determining which type of heating system is the kind that will best serve your needs, you are up against basically two choices: The highly improved but long standing whole house furnace–or a somewhat newer type of system called a heat pump. There are clear advantages to each of these types of heating systems, just as well as there being certain drawbacks to each. Here’s where a studious process of narrowing down the features that work best for your heating needs will come in quite beneficial. Even upon narrowing down your choice to one or the other, you will find that you have a myriad of systems from which to choose.
Furnaces or Heat Pumps
Furnaces are available that run on either gas, oil or electricity, and they have always been the most popular form of home heating equipment sold, and they are very likely to continue to be. Over the years, the way in which they operate has been streamlined and finely honed to a point where these new furnaces on today’s market are extremely energy efficient, having AFUE ratings that reach up into the higher 90 percentages. Both furnaces and heat pumps use ducts to transfer the heated air to the different areas of your home. Furnaces typically need to receive regular maintenance every one or two years–this depends on the actual type of furnace it is. With proper maintenance, a furnace can last well between 15 and 20 years. There are some furnaces that are even designed to work compatibly with a central air condition or cooling system.
How Heat Pumps Work and Why Colder Temps Might Best Benefit from a Furnace Type Heater
Heat pumps do not generate heat, per se, but instead they are designed to extract the heat from the outside air and this is the air that they pump throughout your home. Because of this, they use considerably less energy from not being responsible for generating heat, unlike furnaces, which generate heat. This is why, if you stand next to a vent leading from a heat pump system when it is expelling air, the air that comes out will feel almost cold. Heat pumps are really only able to comfortably heat your home when the outside temps dip below freezing. This being said, heat pumps are better choices for homes in moderate climates, where winters are not terribly frigid nor long. In these areas, homeowners often discover that they have to supplement their home heat pumps with space heaters to adequately heat their homes on colder days. To cool your home, heat pumps simply use a reverse process during the summer, taking the heat out of your indoor air and pumping it outside. Heat pumps are an excellent solution for providing year round climate control in many homes.