It will affect your comfort, your health and your monthly budget. And while you have many decisions to make while you're building a new home, choosing a heating system is one of the most important of all.
But this is no time to be daunted. Instead, look upon the exercise as an opportunity to install a heating system that suits you, your lifestyle and your budget. And with a trustworthy heating system service company at your side, educating you about the issues you ought to consider and the options available to you, you will arrive at the right choice with all the confidence you deserve.
Issues to consider
First, take a step back and see the bigger picture in terms of:
- Your probable preference for natural gas, which is by far the most widespread heating fuel. Propane is an option, but so are heat pumps, which many people consider to be the best and most promising source of renewable energy. A heating system service company can help you compute your likely operating costs for different fuel or energy sources.
- Your choice of either forced air or hot water to distribute heat in your new home. Forced air is the most popular choice, with warm air flowing through ducts and registers. But hot water systems that use a boiler to heat water and circulate it to baseboard radiators are more common than you might think. An interesting twist: hydronic systems that circulate hot water through pipes encased in the floor slab, thereby spreading heat evenly throughout a room. Both systems have advantages and disadvantages.
- The wisdom of choosing an energy efficient system. This might sound like an obvious point, but sometimes the most efficient heating system choice is not the least expensive one up-front. In fact, it might be the most costly. Case in point: Energy Star furnaces, which cost more than other furnaces but operate at efficiency levels in the high 90s. Even a seemingly small difference in a system's efficiency will accumulate to major savings over the lifetime of the system. Here, too, a heating system service company can help you crunch the numbers while factoring in projected maintenance costs.
- The importance of sizing a heating system accurately. This, too, might seem like an obvious point. But many people lean toward the “bigger is better” strategy, assuming that they will never have to worry about their heating needs being met with a larger system. In fact, most heating systems operate at peak efficiency when they run for prolonged periods of time, not start and stop continuously, which wastes energy. A heating system service company can properly size your new system by taking into account your heating load, your home's square footage, elevation, window orientation and other important factors.
Options to consider
After giving these considerations the proper thought, you can zero in on selecting the right heating system for you. They include:
- A gas, propane or oil furnace or boiler system.
- An air-source or geothermal heat pump. The latter, which runs on electricity, is attached to a wall or sits above ground and extracts warmth from the atmosphere. It literally pumps heat rather than converts it from a fuel. A geothermal, or ground-source, heat pump is even more efficient because it absorbs heat from either below the ground or from water pumped from below ground.
- A solar hot-air, solar-thermal or passive-solar system.
- Wood heat, usually through a wood stove that augments another home heating system.
Let a heating system service company like Experts In Your Home help you finesse the details of your new heating system.
