When it comes to home comfort, heating and cooling systems play a big part. A well-designed installation will mesh with the home’s aesthetics and design, while a poorly integrated unit can raise energy costs or fail to maintain desired temperatures. If you’re unsure which option to choose for your house, the guide below helps explain the differences.
A Quick Guide to Home Heating Systems
1. Direct Heating
Fireplaces, space heaters, and pellet stoves are all types of direct heating. Rather than an integrated system, these heat sources are focused on warming a single space. Rooms with stone walls or large windows offer supplemental heat to offset the reduced insulation, but they aren’t efficient when used as a home’s primary heating system.
2. Forced Air
Forced air systems provide heating and cooling through a single network of ducts. In the winter, the HVAC’s cooling unit is shut down, and the furnace powers up. Cool air is heated in this central furnace, and then fans are used to push it through ducts and into individual rooms. Since all the air in the home passes through the same system, which contains a filter, forced air systems can improve indoor air quality. In areas with high or low humidity, it’s easy to add equipment for controlling air moisture levels to the HVAC unit.
3. Radiant Heating
Radiant heating consists of a boiler that pushes heated water through a system of pipes. The hot water is fed through a system of old-fashioned radiators, in-floor tubing, or baseboard radiators. This option is quiet and energy-efficient, but it can be slower to react to thermostat adjustments. Radiant floor heating works well with tile, vinyl, and concrete floors, less effective with wood floors, and ineffective with thick carpeting.
4. Heat Pumps
Another option for homes in temperate climates is heat pumps, and they represent the latest advancements in heating and cooling technology. The typical heat pump system has an outdoor compressor unit that draws heat from the outside air and transfers that heat into the home. In the summer, the heat pump reverses itself and draws heat out of the air inside the home and transfers it outside. Heat pump systems can also be linked to pipe loops buried in the ground, and these systems are commonly called geothermal heat pumps and are extremely energy efficient.
Heat pumps are extremely energy efficient, because they don’t use electricity to generate heat. They simply use electricity to move already existing heat from one place to another. For this reason, heat pumps are considered eco-friendly, green technology.
If you’re shopping for a new heating system, contact Jon’s Plumbing & Heating in Mount Vernon, OH. Since our business was founded in 1998, we’ve specialized in all the nuances of home comfort and pride ourselves on providing energy-efficient, budget-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing solutions. Our experienced team can help you design and install many different heating and cooling systems, including heat pumps, furnaces, and radiant in-floor heating. Learn more about our offerings online, or call us at (740) 520-2312 with any questions.