What Are All the Types of Home Heating You Can Get?

Homeowners in Broken Arrow are lucky because there are plenty of types of home heating systems that are efficient and convenient here. Fuel-burning furnaces, radiant-heating systems, and heat pumps are all types of home heating that work effectively in this climate. 

Forced-Air Furnaces

These systems are by far the most common of all the types of home heating in the United States. They are cost-efficient, relatively easy to install, and they can be highly energy efficient. They produce heat using a fuel, and they blow warmed air through ductwork that's distributed throughout the home. 

Fuel options include natural gas, propane, fuel oil, or electric. Natural gas is the most common and least expensive to operate given the widespread availability of natural gas. 

Oil furnaces produce the most heat per unit of energy consumed. Electric furnaces, while easy to install and operate, cost the most to run. In this region, it makes sense to choose a natural gas furnace if this fuel is available on your lot. 

Radiant Heating

Instead of blowing heated air throughout ductwork like furnaces and heat pumps do, radiant systems use pipes or coils that use electricity or circulate heated liquids in coils in radiators or coils placed on the walls, the ceiling, or under the floors. The heat gradually radiates into the room. This kind of heating is comfortable and quiet. It doesn't contribute to household dust or aggravate airborne allergies. 

Heat Pumps

Heat pumps function like forced-air furnaces but exchange heat instead of creating it with a combustible fuel. Technically, they are the most energy-efficient types of home heating, especially if they're geothermal heat pumps (GHPs). 

GHPs and above-ground air-source heat pumps (ASHPs) work like refrigerators. In the summer, they absorb the heat in your home and move it outside. In the winter, the appliance removes the heat in the outdoor air and brings it inside. 

A GHP has such great efficiency because it uses an underground loop field where temperatures are always stable. ASHPs complete the heat exchange in above-ground air that can be either hot or cold. 

Contact Air Assurance for help choosing the best types of home-heating systems. Our pros can give you professional advice and insight. We provide HVAC services for Broken Arrow homeowners. 

Your Guide to Hydronic Heating

As winter approaches, you're again faced with the age old question of how to heat your Oklahoma home as efficiently and effectively as possible. There are many ways to reduce energy bills and maximize your furnace's efficiency. However, you may want to take things a step further, outfitting your home with a hydronic heating system. What is hyrdronic heating, and how can it benefit you? Here's a basic guide to forced air vs hydronic systems.

What Is Hydronic Heating?

In a traditional forced air system, air is heated by the furnace, then blown through ducts and vents to each room of your home, to warm it up. With hydronic heating, water is heated instead of air, using a boiler instead of a furnace.

Hot water or steam then flows through pipes throughout your home. Each room is outfitted with its own heat exchanger, either in the baseboards or mounted somewhere. The heat exchanger extracts heat from the water and uses it to warm that room.

Pros and Cons of Forced Air Vs Hydronic Systems

Since a hydronic system circulates water through your home instead of air, there are no dust particles or other contaminants blowing into a room, which reduces the risk for allergy and asthma sufferers. There's also no air filter to change. A hydronic system does take longer to heat a room than forced air, but the heat also remains in the room longer.

The main appeal of hydronic heating, though, is that it's energy efficient. Extracting heat from the water uses much less energy than heating the air - and the lack of vents means there's no energy loss from ductwork, either.

Forced air, on the other hand, is much less expensive to install - especially if you're retrofitting an existing home. A heat exchanger in every room, plus additional plumbing to pipe hot water through the walls, can end up costing about twice as much for a hydronic system than it would for forced air.

To get more information about forced air vs hydronic systems, contact us at Air Assurance. We're Broken Arrow's source for home comfort service.

Why the Forced Air Furnace Is Still One of Your Best Heating Options

If the forced air furnace were a failure, like the Edsel, the revolving hammock or sauna hot pants, then it wouldn't be the most popular form of heating in the United States, warming more than 35 million homes when the weather turns brisk. Forced air furnaces have been dependable heating systems in North America for many years and remain a viable choice for your new Tulsa home or even as a replacement furnace.

How Forced-Air Systems Operate

The operation of a forced air furnace is fairly straightforward:

• The blower and heating burner or element respond to the demand of a programmable or non-programmable thermostat.

• Filtered room air travels through a series of vents and insulated ductwork to the furnace.

• Air is heated in a chamber inside the furnace called the heat exchanger.

• Heated air is "forced" from the heat exchanger via the furnace's blower back through the ductwork and out through the vents to warm individual rooms.

• Once the pre-determined temperature on the thermostat is reached, the furnace's heating coil or element and blower switch off and await the next demand.

Benefits of a Forced-Air Heating System

Forced air heating systems are understandably popular for a number of important reasons:

• Lower initial investment -- Forced air furnaces are widely available in different sizes to suit heating demands of large or small homes or buildings.

• Shared ductwork and vents for future A/C installation -- Ductwork and vents can be used in tandem with central air conditioning units.

• Availability of attic, basement or odd-shaped areas -- Furnace models are available that fit these unique installation requirements.

• Fast, efficient heating -- A forced air furnace blows heated air quickly throughout an entire house.

• Runs on a variety of fuels -- Forced air heating systems run on either electric, natural gas, propane or fuel oil.

Forced air furnaces are not noiseless systems, so the sound of a blower motor can be an issue.  Electric forced air heating systems are, however, less noisy than are gas or fuel oil burning furnaces.

For more information on forced air furnaces in Tulsa, contact our experts at Air Assurance.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in the Tulsa and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). 

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