What is the Best Home Heating System for Your Home?
Do you remember the old humble fireplace? You can still find it in many places as a classic reminder of the home heating systems of the past. With the technology growing by leaps and bounds there are plenty of home heating options available today. This can however result in making the choice tougher. But by reading about the features along with their advantages can help you to access which system is better for your home. Let us look at the various types of heating systems.
Forced air heating systems
The burners work on different types of fuels for heating. These include natural gas, oil and electricity. More of this are described at http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/heating.aspx. Air is indirectly heated and forced through a network of ducts that lead to the rooms in your house. Burning of fossil fuels is not environment friendly, but out of the listed resources, natural gas emits less particulate matter and CO2. Electricity is the next green fuel if available from hydroelectric dams. In case none of them is available you have the lost resort in oil fired burners.
Boilers and radiant heating systems
In case of radiant heating systems the heating fuels are the same as in forced air heating systems, but the medium of heat transfer changes from air to water. Also instead of a direct blast of hot air, you get the heat radiated from coils in which the hot water flows in a closed loop. The boiler heats the water without making it to boil. The coils can be like traditional radiators, baseboard heaters, or aluminium panels in the flooring, wall or ceilings. The radiant home heating system are quite efficient and use less space than forced air duct system.
Heat pumps
The heat pumps use the refrigerant to absorb heat from the outside sources like air and a water body and then use a heat exchanger to transfer it inside the home. The process can be reversed in summers to cool the homes. The heat pumps require a fairly warm temperature outside to be able to pick up the heat and hence are not ideal for freezing temperatures. They make use of resistance heaters working on electricity to generate the required heat during freezing conditions. Visit website of experts in heating systems.
Thus it can be seen that the radiant heating systems are the most efficient, but they can be expensive to install and also maintain because of the corrosive nature of water. Heat pumps are becoming popular because of less equipment used, but are not well suited for sub zero temperatures.