Spring could be the best time to consider switching heating systems when a replacement is imminent. It’s the end of the season and HVAC contractors are entering a slow period before the cooling season starts. It’s also a time when you don’t need to rely on daily heating to keep your home comfortable and you have the luxury of time to make a solid choice among these viable heating systems.
Gas Heating
If you have natural gas lines in your neighborhood or on your property, it makes sense to use this fuel for home heating. It’s the least expensive and the most commonly used in the U.S. There are plenty of options available for gas furnaces and boilers with regard to energy efficiency and features.
Oil Furnaces
The downside of an oil furnace is the availability of heating oil. Although there are suppliers in the Dayton area, you’ll need an oil storage tank in your home or yard. Oil furnaces have the longest lifetimes of all the heating system types, although they cost more than a gas furnace. Fuel oil burns hotter than natural gas and propane, but even so, heating with fuel oil is considerably more expensive than natural gas.
Electricity
Switching heating systems to electric is a viable option as long as you do it with heat pump technology instead of electric resistance furnaces or heaters. The latter are the most expensive way to heat homes, since electricity itself is so inefficient to produce, which makes it a costly heating fuel.
Heat pumps cost three to five times less to operate than baseboard or floor heating. Heat pumps don’t actually create heat. They extract it from the air and move it into your home during the winter. If you need a new cooling system, a heat pump may be a viable choice, since it both heats and cools.
The expert advice you’ll get from the pros at Ace Hardware Home Services can help with switching heating systems. We provide trusted HVAC services for Dayton-area homeowners.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Dayton, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).
