Making sure that your home has heat is one of the biggest things on your to-do list when you are either building a new home or looking to buy a home. Heating Systems are a really important part to your home design and they are necessary in the cold, winter months. There are several different types of heating systems that are available due to the ever changing rules and regulations and new technologies becoming available every day.
What Types of Heating Systems are Available?
There are several different types of heating systems that are available for you to install in your home.
Air Conditioning
Many people now install an air conditioning system into their homes to perform different functions throughout the year. When the weather is warm, an AC system is great for cooling the room down. Furthermore. when looking to heat a home, air conditioning units successfully circle warm, clean air around the premises. Although these systems are great value, at some point you will need to invest in an AC Replacement, which doesn’t have to be expensive if you shop around for the right service provider!
Furnaces
A lot of homes have central heat, which usually means your heating system is a furnace. Furnaces work by moving heated air through paths called ducts and at the end of the duct, the air is delivered to the room and the room warms up. It’s delivered throughout the house by air registers or grills. This is known as the ducted warm-air system and it can be started by electricity, natural gas or fuel oil.
Some furnaces are gas-fired, which means that they have to have fuel in order to function. The Fuel mixes with air and the burning process begins. There are flames that will heat something called a metal heat exchanger, and after this, the heat is then transferred to the air. There are minimum-efficiency furnaces that are reducing about 30 percent of fuel energy that is wasted by using inducer fans to help get the exhaust gasses through the heat exchange and get the induction going into the chimney. If you do own or are planning to buy a furnace that is oil fuelled you may be worried about transferring the oil yourself, however there are companies like Bucks County Fuel that offer oil delivery to you – saving you the hassle of transporting and filling your furnace yourself.
Boilers
Boilers are used to distribute the heat in hot water, which turns into heat as it goes through radiators and other devices to rooms throughout your home. Once the water has cooled, the water returns to the boiler to be reheated. These are called hydronic systems. Usually, residential boilers use heating oil or natural gas for the fuel needed to run the boiler. There are also steam boilers, but they are not used in as many homes and businesses today as in years before. Instead, oil and natural gas are more commonly used.
Boilers actually use a pump to circulate the hot water through the different pipes to the radiators to get the heat to the different areas that it needs to go to. There are important controls on boilers that need to be carefully checked many times. These include thermostats, valves that help with circulation regulation, aquastats, and water temperature. It is usually much easier to install zone controls for each individual room when you are working with a hydronic system than with a forced air system. Oil-fired condensing boilers are relatively uncommon in the United States because they offer lower heat potential and have a greater chance of fouling if used with conventional fuel oil.
Heat Pumps
Heat pumps are one of the easy systems to work with because they are essentially just two-way air conditioners. When you do not need heat, in the late spring and summer time, the unit can function as an air conditioner as well . When the seasons change, the pump reverses itself and pulls in heat from the cold outside and through the electrical system, the heat is circulated throughout the house. Pretty much every heat pump will use the warm-air delivery system to circulate heat throughout the house.
How to Install the Heating System
Here are the top five ways to install these particular types of heating systems into your home. Some of these ways are solely dedicated to if you are working with a newer home or an older home, but all of the ways will be as conventional as possible.
- Pay an Installer to install your Heating System for you.
This one is usually the one that many people go for. Because they want to be sure that everything is installed correctly and that everything is working in its proper functioning, it makes sense to hire an installer. There are several ways to go about this. You can look up a professional heating company on different apps or websites, like HomeAdvisor or Angie’s List. These websites let you see exactly who will be coming to your door to perform the work for you. This also gives you the option to read reviews from real-life customers so you can already have a great idea of their values and customer service experiences so you can try to provide a good one. Theses websites will help you find out the prices of these installers work, and help you decide which installer is right for you.
- Installing the Heating System Yourself
Are you a person who loves a DIY project? Then why not try to install your heating system yourself? There are several instructional videos online that could help you learn how to install the heating system correctly and to help you test whether or not it actually works. This would probably be one of the cheaper options as well because you would only have to buy the parts and not pay for any of the labor because it would be you on your own time.
- Installing the Heating System Yourself, but with Help from a Professional Installer
In this way, you are still installing the heating system in yourself, but you also have the watchful eye of a professional installer by your side to assist in any mistakes that you make or problems that you run into. This way, you will know that everything has been installed correctly the minute that you complete your installation project. This will also help you learn better about installing the systems on your own and you will be confident that you could fix a mechanical problem if one arises.
- Paying a Friend to Install your Heating System for you
Let’s say that you have a friend that runs their own installation business and you are needing to have a heating system put in brand new or replaced in your home. You could ask your friend to complete the project. You will be helping him out as a small business owner and giving him a job that he could potentially use as advertisement for his business. Because this person is your friend, they might even cut you a cheaper deal if they would like to do that for you.
- Replace your Older Heating System with a Newer Model
This is conventional because everyone knows that you would not take out a heating system and not put in a new one in its place. Sometimes, you can also just replace certain parts that may have broken off and keep the rest of the heating system already installed. Other times, you’ll have to replace entire panels and more than one piece at a time. It is fairly easy to buy replacement parts for some of the pieces on your heating system.
There you have it, five conventional ways to install a heating system in your home. If you are about to go through the process of adding a heating system to your home or just replacing parts on your current one, you will definitely get your money’s worth with your heating system. Stay warm out there!
