How to Choose the Perfect Heating System for Your Home

When considering a heating system for your new home or updating your older heating system, you'll want to keep in mind the various supplies of heating fuels that are available. Where a propane system is a gas stored in a tank behind your home, natural gas has to be piped to you underground. Most furnaces will burn either type of fuel with a quick change of the gas orifice, but which one is really better?

With natural gas, you never have to worry about running out as it's fed to your home straight from the supplier through pipes. With propane, you have to monitor the amount of gas in your tank or, if your propane company will do it, have the supplier deliver gas once a month to top off the tank. During the summer months they could scale their delivery schedule back as you wouldn't need as much gas then. The biggest advantage to propane is you're able to monitor and manage the cost of the gas. Like any other non-renewable resource, the price fluctuates from day to day. If you monitor the price and see that it has come down in price, you can have the company send a delivery truck and fill your tank. With natural gas being piped in, you're locked into the price at the time you're company bills you.

Many people like to heat their home with a fireplace or wood stove. The problem with heating with wood is it stays much warmer in the rooms that are closest to the fireplace and the others get a little colder. You can help circulate the warm air throughout your home by using ceiling fans blowing the heated air back towards the floor. This will get warmer air to the rooms further away from the heat source.

The most efficient way to heat your home, though, is with a heat pump. With a heat pump, you have air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter all within the same system. Most people believe a heat pump is flowing heated air into a home, which isn't true. The heat side of the heat pump simply absorbs the cold air in your home and returns it to the compressor outside much the same way the a/c side of the heat pump is absorbing warm air. The warm air that you feel coming out of the vents in your home is the temperature of the air once the cold air as been absorbed.

Heat pumps are much more efficient in home heating as they require no outside source of fuel. It's totally run by electricity, eliminating the need for propane or other heating gas. Older model homes with furnaces would need electricity to operate the fan to blow the warm air through the house and a fuel to make the heat. This makes the heat pump the most efficient and economical heating system on the market.

As you consider how your would like to heat your new home, keep in mind the cost and availability of heating gases and what type of heater will be burning those gases. You could, more than likely, save yourself some money in the long run by installing a heat pump to begin with. Their efficiency will long override the expense of installing one.

*Heating Systems Buying Guide, Ebay Guides, Ebay.com