You are here » » » » Home HeatingHome Heating Systems—Best Options In many regions, home heating systems are required for anywhere from three to seven months of the year. Choosing the best heat system for your particular home design can reduce overall heating costs and make for a more comfortable and healthy home. A house heating system works hand in hand with the home insulation. A poorly insulated home will be hard to heat regardless of the system chosen. Despite this, some methods of domestic heating are best used for poorly insulated homes while other systems are most effective in well insulated homes. If you are using a very small screen or smart phone, rotate your device to landscape view to read the table below. Best Heating System Comparisons Electric Forced Air Furnace These are relatively inexpensive house heating systems. Duct work can also be used to connect to an air conditioning system for cooling during the warmer months. Easy to connect with a heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system.

High efficiency air filtration can be added to system to reduce symptoms for those suffering from allergies or asthma. Without air filtration, can make symptoms worse for those suffering from allergies or asthma.free window ac units Lowers the humidity of the home so a humidifier may be required at sometimes during the year.best prices on ac units Best heating system in regards to price for most well insulated home designs.car a/c repair kit Excellent heat control on a room by room basis. Unused rooms can have the heat set low. Poor air flow which can result in excess humidity and unhealthy air quality. Ideally a ducted heat recovery ventilation system should be installed with baseboard heating systems. Because it does not use ducts, separate duct work may need to be installed for air filtration or air conditioning.

Gas Forced Air Furnace Relatively inexpensive home heating system. Duct work can also be used for cooling during the warmer months. High efficiency air filtration can be added to these house heat systems to reduce symptoms for those suffering from allergies or asthma. Without air filtration, a forced air furnace can make symptoms worse for those suffering from allergies or asthma. Lowers the humidity of the home so a humidifier may be required at some times during the year. Due to the fact that it is warmest in the zone where we inhabit the home (down low) the house heat feels more comfortable for the occupants. No drafts from forced air heating. The in floor heaters will quickly dry any floors which are sometimes wet such as bathrooms and entrances. The warm floors make for more comfortable feet. Excellent heat control for an individual zone or room in the house. The heat can be set low or programmed with a timer for unused rooms or for night time.

For instance, bathroom infloor heat systems can be programmed to come on just prior to when you usually wake up and turn off when you usually leave the home. Can easily be added when remodeling a bathroom or kitchen if you need more heat in a given area. If you will require cooling during the warmer months, ducts will have to be installed separately for cooling. This would be an expensive way to heat an entire house. The actual heating mats that go under the finished floor surfaces are expensive. Due to the fact that it is warmest in the zone down low where we tend to be in our home, heating from infloor radiant hydronic systems feels warmer and more comfortable for the occupants. The hydronic infloor heating boiler can be used for both heating and domestic hot water. Cannot be easily be added when remodeling one part of a home. The heating tubes are set in about 1-1/2 inches of concrete subfloor. Because of the cost associated with installation and equipment, you generally would not use it for just one room or a small part of the house.

Provides both heating and cooling year round. Very efficient house heating system in terms of the energy required to run the pump as compared to the energy produced by the pump. (Geothermal heatpumps can produce 3 to 4 kilowatts of heat for every kilowatt of electricity used to run the pump.) Easy to connect with a heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system or a central air filtration device. The heat pump can also be connected with a domestic hot water heater to help heat the home's hot water. High initial capital cost. For small, well insulated homes the initial capital cost may not be recovered for many years. Air Sourced Heat Pump In colder climates, less heat energy is available for the heat pump to provide house heat. At temperatures below 45 degrees Fahrenheit (or 7 degrees Celsius), air sourced heat pump systems are not effective. Best Heating System: Analysis Software Download free home heating analysis software from Natural Resources Canada: HOT2®XP is designed for home owners with low-rise, relatively standard home designs.

For more complicated home designs, see the other free heating system software tools available from Natural Resources Canada. No part of this web site may be reproduced or copied without written permission. Illegal Internet copies will be detected by Copyscape.What Is The Best Kind Of Heater For Your Home When it comes to kinds of heating systems there are many choices. Knowing which is most efficient heating system for you in the long run can be a difficult choice because there are a number of factors that determine what the best heating system for your home will be, including the area of the country Heating oil is much the same as diesel and is made largely from imported oil. Older homes in many parts of the country are heated by oil fired heaters and homeowners are subject to the possibility ofOil prices are now determined by overseas buyer and are becoming independent of the U.S. dollar. For this reason we see the price of oil increase even as natural gas stays low.

Replacing an oil fired heater is expensive though and many homeowners choose to keep paying for this more expensive form of heating rather than replace an entire system. The Advantage Of Gas Home Heating Systems While burning any kind of fossil fuel is far from being green, natural gas heating systems are more eco friendly that oil firedGas heaters give off less particulate matter, emit less CO2 during combustion and use a resource that is locally available. The United States has, according to some estimates, enough natural gas to last over 200 years atNew shale gas discoveries literally have the country flooded with cheap natural gas. These shale beds are numerous and are even located under much of the cold Northeastern United States. The Marcellus Shale lies under overFor this reason natural gas should remain an economical heating method for many more years. Natural gas heating is efficient, converting up to 95% of the fuel into heat energy.

Because of the long term outlook for natural gas prices a gas home heating system should be considered.  other hand, propane is largely a by product of crude oil refining. is tied to the volatile price of oil and tends to be more expensive than naturalWhere no natural gas lines are available it may be a viable alternative to oil fired heaters in climates where a heat pump is too inefficient due to Are Wood Heaters The Most Eco Friendly Kind Of As far as efficiency the burning of wood is among the least efficient means of producing heat. The ultimate source of heat in anyHydrogen is not that abundant in wood and this requires large amounts of it to be needed. If you live in a city you will have to transport the wood from a forest somewhere, and this requires energy as well. be efficient, when a blower type of fire box is used, however in an ordinary fireplace most of the heat goes up the chimney. Wood heating is not the best kind of home heating system unless you live in the middle of a forest or where

there is abundant and cheap wood for the taking. Variations of wood heaters use corn, wood pellets and other agricultural products. Like oil, these are subject to rising and falling commodity prices. Only if you live on a corn farm might a corn burning stove be a good choice for a home heater. Advantages Of Heat Pumps For Home Heating A heat pump is basically an air conditioner that can be reversed, pumping warm air inside the home. Because heat pumps need a fairly warm outside temperature, above freezing, to efficiently make hot air, they are not ideal for all climates. When the temperature goes below a certain threshold, say 30  Fahrenheit, the emergency heat strip kicks in. emergency heat strip uses resistance to create heat from electricity. heaters are by far not the best kind of heater for your home. While they may be called efficient because they convert almost all of the electricity they use into heat, they require a lot of energy do do so.

Electric space heaters are also not the best kind of home heating system because of the incredible amount of electricity they use. Because gas home heaters need to use the emergency backup heat strip often in very cold climates they are not a good choice forAn alternative that will work however is a ground source heat Ground Source Heat Pumps May Be The Best Kind Of Heater For Your Home, If You Have Room Example of Heat Exchange Loop Buried In Ground Ground source heat pumps are a very green way toThey are not for everyone though because you need a sizeable amount of outside space to install an underground loop of pipe or to drillFor this reason ground source heat pumps are installed mostly by rural homeowners and businesses with enough land.  heat pumps work by moving heat from the relatively warm soil underground intoA heat pump is reversible and can either heat or cool the home. home is heated and cooled with a ground source heat pump made by Tetco.

A trench is typically dug around the perimeter of the home and flexible plastic tubing is used to form a loop through which a substance like glycol is pumped to exchange heat with the soil. can be set up using vertical wells where a trench is not possible. home may need as many as five shallow wells for a geothermal system. source heat pumps are green heating systems because they efficiently transferThat electricity can come from green sources on the grid and in part from rooftop solar. In addition to being efficient, up to an equivalent of 25 SEER, a ground source heat pump can be tied into your home hotA "desuperheater" line off of the hot side of the compressor can be piped in a loop configuration with your hot water heater. Is In Floor Radiant Heating The Best Home Radiant floor heating systems are very popular in northern climates because they provide a more even heat, keep floors warm to walk on and for children to play on and eliminate much of the heat distribution,

dry air and dust problems associated with central air systems. is not a type of heater, it is a method of heat distribution. Any of the above systems can incorporate a radiant floor system to distribute the heat. Other Kinds Of Heating Systems For Your Home When building a new home the goal should be to make the home so efficient that you do not need much heating. passive solar homes and insulated concrete form or ICF homes report that they can heat the entire home for as litte as $40 a month in the winter. solar methods should be a part of every new home plan because they save money over the life of the home. You may want to check out active solar heating systems to supplement one of the above heater types for your home. systems use a rooftop collector to heat water that is used in radiant floorSolar heating is an emerging technology so check with your local solar hot water company to see if they install solar home heating equipment.