What Keeps You Warm at Night?

With winter right around the corner, now is the perfect time to start thinking about which home heating system is right for you. There are various systems on the market, each with its benefits, making it tough to know which one is right for your home. In this blog post, we’ll look at three of the most popular types of heating systems: furnaces, boilers, and heat pumps. Our goal is to educate you on heating systems to help you decide which system may be right for you and your home.

Furnace

How It Works

Perhaps the most common type of home heating system, furnaces typically use either natural gas or electricity as their fuel source. They work by heating air and circulating it throughout your home. A furnace has a few key components, including a burner, a heat exchanger, a blower, and a flue.

Benefits

Furnaces are very efficient and can provide you with a comfortable and warm home without running a high energy bill, and can also help to improve the air quality by providing better ventilation. An additional benefit of having a furnace-heated home is that it will last a long time with proper maintenance, ranging from 15 to 20 years. Lastly, being one of the most inexpensive heating systems on the market, they work well in conjunction with other heating systems, such as heat pumps.

Boilers

How It Works

Boilers are similar to furnaces in that they circulate heated air throughout your home using a network of ducts and vents. However, boilers rely on hot water rather than hot air. Boilers can be powered by either natural gas or electricity and can also be used to provide domestic hot water for things like showers and dishwashing.

Benefits

Boilers are very efficient; they don’t waste any energy because all the heat produced by the boiler is used to heat your home or supply hot water. Like furnaces, a well-maintained boiler can last a long time ranging from 20 to 30 years. They do not require a lot of maintenance. A regular tune-up once a year will suffice. Additionally, boilers provide even more heating than furnaces and can be used with radiant flooring to heat your home from the ground up evenly.

Heat Pumps

How It Works

Heat pumps circulate warm or cool air throughout your home using a network of ducts and vents. Unlike furnaces or boilers, however, heat pumps don’t generate their own heat—they simply move existing heat from one place to another, making them an incredibly efficient option. They come in two main types: air-source heat pumps and ground-source (geothermal) heat pumps. This means they will either take heat from the air or the earth and transfer it inside your home. During the warmer months, they will pull heat from your home and release it into the air or ground to keep your home cool.

Benefits

Heat pumps are very efficient—they can provide up to four times the amount of energy they consume. They also work well in most climates, excluding places where warm weather is scarce. Their lifespan is also relatively long, lasting as many as 20 years. Additionally, heat pumps are a great eco-friendly option because they do not require fossil fuels to operate.