When the seasons change and you find yourself fighting the outside chill, it’s time to switch on the heat in your home. If you’ve recently purchased a home your old home is undergoing a big renovation, you’ll need to step up your central heating and find a way to keep things warm without breaking the bank. If you’re looking to find the best way of heating your home, you’re probably already thinking about a few popular options. Before making your decision, be sure to weigh all the options carefully and clearly to decide what works best for your home. If you’re trying to find the best option on the market, take a look below to learn about some of the best heating systems out there.
Forced Air
A forced air system is extremely common in American homes and employs pressure to distributed heated air from your home’s furnace all through the rest of the house. This method can also be used for central air, making it an ideal system for homes that deal with cold winters, hot summers, and everything in between. You’ll also have a lot more control over the quality of the air that gets circulated through your home by using a forced air system. Air in your vents can be dehumidified or filtered to help create a cleaner airflow. However, this system requires a lot of complicated ducts and a sometimes noisy fan that can be heard around the home. If you value quiet and want to keep things simple, this may not be the option for you.
Radiant Heat
Hot water tubing circulating underneath your floorboards provides a natural, seamless way of heating the entire home. The heat rises up from the floor, creating a comfortable vertical heat wave that fights drafts efficiently. The heat feels evenly distributed through the home, and if you employ an energy-efficient boiler to heat the water, you can end up saving a lot of money on bills. However, the process of installation can be costly and complicated, especially if you end up needing to do maintenance.
Hydronic Heat
If you’ve been in a home that uses hydronic heat, you’ll be able to tell instantly by the wraparound structure of the baseboard. Like radiant heat, hot water heat is piped through these structures to provide an energy-efficient wave of heat through the home. You can purchase your boiler through heating services from Bradley Mechanical, and the choice of boiler can be customized, allowing you to choose propane, natural gas, or electricity for a low-cost option and efficient option. The only drawbacks are the time it takes to heat the entire home and the issues presented by the hot baseboards. For instance, if you’re someone who likes to hang drapes or low-hanging pieces of art on the walls, this could present a fire hazard for a hydronic heat system.
Steam Radiant
Steam heat is an older form of technology that you’ve probably seen in older apartment buildings and homes in large cities. Using a stationary radiator, steam is issued into the room through piping, creating a quick and intense burst of heat designed to quickly heat up small spaces. While this type of heating unit provides a pleasant blast of hot air in a smaller room or apartment, it’s hard to control the amount of heating you get, and it’s even harder to ignore the loud clanging noise made by the pipes. Though these units can technically be tailored to use energy-efficient heating sources, it can be hard to disguise the fact that you’re dealing with a large, obstructive object in each room of your home. If you value aesthetics above all, you might want to choose something that’s a bit more out of sight.
Geothermal
Geothermal heat is fairly new technology on the market. Using a Geothermal Heat Pump to push heated air into a home through below-ground piping, this type of heating technology employs the best parts of radiant heating and hydronic heat technology to provide an even, easily controlled distribution of heat through the home. Geothermal heat is favored in newer homes due to its extreme commitment to energy efficiency, saving homeowners up to 50 percent in cooling bills and 70 percent on heating bills compared to older technologies. While this is a huge amount to save on heating any given year, the system itself is costly to install. Because it’s a newer type of technology and is still in its early stages of development, it could also present other issues down the line.
