Heating Your Home in The Wintertime
When it comes to heating your home, there are a lot more options available than there are for the alternative, cooling. You also have a lot more room to be energy-efficient and save on your utility bills. In this week’s piece, we’re going to take a quick look at some of the less common heating methods.
To start, though, we’ll talk about the most common delivery method for heat and then diverge from there.
Forced-air heating
Forced-air is probably the most common way you’ll find heating homes across the United States, but again, it’s more of a delivery system rather than an actual heat source in that it can involve one of several different heat sources.
Chances are, you have some variant of this system in your home already. In this type of system, heated air travels through a system of ducts and is expelled through vents into the different rooms and areas of your home in order to maintain a particular temperature. That temperature is whatever you set your thermostat to, and when the desired temperature is reached, the heat will shut off until the temperature drops down again.
The main difference between the different types of forced air heating systems is the type of equipment that actually heats the air. For example, you could have a gas furnace, an electric furnace, a heat pump or a hydronic coil. All of these are capable of heating air, and they rely on a forced-air system (basically a fan) to distribute that warm air throughout the home.
Most forced-air heating systems are incredibly energy efficient and can effectively keep your home comfortable all winter long. They’re most commonly made to be incorporated with central air conditioning systems for year round temperature control. Heat pumps are especially convenient in this way, as they’re able to both heat and cool your home depending on the season and your home comfort needs.
All of these probably sound familiar to you, but you may be asking yourself what a heat pump is.
Heat pump
A heat pump is a mechanical-compression cycle refrigeration system that can be reversed to either heat or cool a controlled space. Installation for this type of system typically consists of two parts: an indoor unit called an air handler and an outdoor unit similar to a central air conditioner (usually referred to as a heat pump). A compressor circulates refrigerant that absorbs and releases heat as it travels between the indoor and outdoor units.
It works both ways, as it were, in that a heat pump is basically a heat transporter constantly moving warm air from one place to another, to where it’s needed or not needed, depending on the season. When it’s cold outside, a heat pump extracts this outside heat and transfers it inside. When it’s warm outside, it reverses directions and acts like an air conditioner, removing heat from your home. It should be noted that this might not be the best system for particularly frigid climates.
The biggest advantage of a heat pump is that it moves heat instead of generating it, which is more efficient. Also, it is powered by electricity, so you can save substantially on fuel consumption.
Gas fireplace
If you do want to use gas in some way, however, a gas furnace isn’t your only option. A gas fireplace can be much more efficient, especially if you have a smaller home or tend to need only heat portions of your home at a time.
The main reason for this efficiency is that there’s very little heat lost in transfer, and there’s less energy spent in transporting that heat around the home. A gas fireplace uses only a insert in the wall (you can also convert a traditional fireplace to gas too!), a decorative log and burner apparatus, a fuel line, and a venting system. They rely on what’s called zone heating, meaning they emit heat that’s allowed to naturally spread around the home.
While this may not heat your basement, you may decide that you only need to heat a few rooms in your home on chilly days. Gas fireplaces are incredibly efficient because they don’t require much in terms of maintenance beyond an annual $75 to $125 checkup and they burn with a 65% to 99% efficiency rating, which means very little pollution, smoke, or waste heat/energy.
Plus, the only structures inside the fireplace are purely decorative, which means no more purchasing firewood or dealing with smoke.
Wood burning stove
All the same, sometimes that smoky, comforting fire smell is a good thing! If you have a rustic cabin-style home, a wood-burning stove may be exactly what you need, especially if you have ready access to firewood that you don’t need to go out and buy.
Wood burning stoves can be a little less efficient in terms of heat source, but for most of us, firewood is extremely cheap if not free, depending on where your home is. There’s no mistaking the appeal of the kids coming inside to a crackling fire after trudging home in the snow from the bus stop, and few things are better on a cold, windy night than a flaming hearth, so to speak.
Like gas fireplaces, wood burning stoves use zone heating, so while they may not warm up the entire home as much as the room they’re located in, they’re still very efficient and aren’t subject to fluctuating fuel prices.
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- Get It Right Solutions