House hunters, here’s an overview of some of the most common types of home heating systems you could encounter, along with a few of the pros and cons.
Zonal heating systems are set up to heat specific zones of the house. Thermostats control only the heater or heaters that make up each individual zone. Common types of zonal heating systems include electric wall heaters, electric baseboard heaters, electric or gas fireplaces, ceiling cable heat, and radiant floor heat.
Electric wall heaters and baseboard heaters are less expensive to install than a central heating system, and don’t have a duct system to maintain. On the downside, they limit furniture placement in the room. Also, they tend to burn dust on the elements inside the heaters, creating dirty spots on the wall.
Radiant ceiling cable is an outdated and inefficient system, with a lot of heat loss into the attic.
Radiant floor heat creates a nice warm floor underfoot, and does a nice job of maintaining an even temperature in the room. Radiant floor heat can be expensive to install, and works best with floor coverings such as tile.
If you tend to stay in only one part of the house at a time, zonal heating allows you to maintain different settings in different areas. Done right, and for the right type of person, this can result in energy savings. But if you move around the house a lot, or if you forget to set back the different zones to different temperatures at different times of the day, you’ll quickly lose those savings.
A central heating system uses a single furnace that creates heated air and a fan and duct system to distribute that heated air. Depending on the type of furnace, the heat is created through the burning of natural gas, propane, fuel oil or wood, or by passing an electrical current.
A single thermostat controls the heating demand for the entire house. This adds convenience, but it also means that you’re heating rooms that may not be in use during certain parts of the day. You can close off the registers to unused rooms, but when you do that, you unbalance the heating demands for the entire system.
Central heating systems lend themselves to other convenience factors. You can install a clock thermostat, also called a setback thermostat. This allows you to set specific times when a clock in the thermostat will raise and lower the thermostat. You can also add a central electronic air filter to help keep the house cleaner, as well as a central humidifier. Finally, most central heating systems can be adapted to add central air conditioning as well.
All that said, a central heating system is not always the most efficient. You need to look at the condition of the furnace, and especially the condition of the duct system. Many older systems, and even some newer ones, have loose joints and poor insulation.
Heat pumps are another form of central heating system that offers greater energy efficiency and also offers cooling. It consists of an interior heating unit and an outdoor compressor unit. Through a system that works similar to your refrigerator, heat is drawn from the outside air and transferred to the house through a series of refrigerant-filled coils. In the summer, the process can be reversed, removing heat from the house and transferring it outside.
There are different types of heat pumps available, depending on where they draw their outside heat from. The most common is the air-source heat pump. Heat pumps work best in relatively mild climates; as temperatures begin to drop, conventional backup electric heating elements come on in stages to provide supplemental heat as needed. A central thermostat controls the entire system.
On the downside, heat pumps have a higher initial installed cost than conventional central heating systems. They also typically deliver air through the ducts at a little lower overall temperature, which some people don’t like when comparing it to conventional furnaces.
Because they offer greater energy efficiency and also offer cooling capabilities, heat pumps tend to have a higher resale value than other types of heating systems.
By Paul Blanchina
Article Source: NewsOK.com
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