I’m commonly asked about various forms of home heating. In our climate home heating is essential. There are a variety of ways to heat a home, and all forms will do the trick, albeit some will heat a home cheaper than the next. The following are the basic forms of heat commonly found in our province. I’ll discuss each form in depth on separate blog posts, but the following primer should help explain a few terms.
Forced Air
This is one of the more familiar types of heating in our province. A furnace blows heated air through a network of ducts to registers throughout the house. One or two large return grilles allow air to return to the furnace. Furnaces can be heated by electric coils, natural gas, propane, fuel oil, wood pellets, or refrigerant coils heated by heat pumps.
A benefit to furnaces is that they actively filter the air in your home. The return air to the furnace is passed through an air filter that traps pollen, dust, dirt, and other particles in the air. Filters range in efficiency from a throw-away filter that will be found in most homes to more elaborate electro-static and high efficiency filters. Replacing your filters on a seasonal basis ensures the air in your home remains as clean as possible. Clean filters also allow the furnace to consume less energy to operate the fan.
Furnaces can usually be very easily equipped with air-conditioning coils. A refrigerant coil is added to the furnace and is connected to a condensing unit outside. This same condensing unit may be a heat pump unit that can heat your home in colder months. Not all air-conditioners can be used as heat pumps, but it is generally not that much more expensive to upgrade to a heat pump model. Most heat pumps today are air-source heat pumps. Geothermal heat is a type of heat pump system that provides heating and cooling to furnace systems. Air-source heat pumps draw heat from outside air while geothermal systems draw heat from the ground.
Hot Water Radiation
Another type of heat that can be used is hot water radiation. A boiler heats water up to temperatures typically around 160°F to 180°F (for comparison, your hot water tank heats water up to 140°F, while water boils at 212°F). The water is pumped by a circulating pump to terminal units around the house. Terminal units can either be baseboard radiators, vertical panel radiators, fan coils that blow hot air, or even the old-fashioned but very handsome cast iron radiators. These units heat up and radiate heat to the room, hence the term radiator.
Boilers can be heated using the same types of fuels as furnaces. Certain types of fuels, such as natural gas, allow for more elaborate and efficient heating designs. Very advanced natural gas boilers that operate at 95% efficiency (compared to the 80% or lower efficient boilers in most homes) have been on the market for a few years in North America. Wood-pellet residential boilers are very popular in Europe and are beginning to be used in larger buildings in New Brunswick.
Despite the misleading name, hot water boilers don’t boil water. Steam boilers are found in very large buildings or building networks like hospitals or university campuses. Steam heat was once common in homes, but was phased out decades ago. Steam heat is a fickle and unforgiving science best left to well-trained stationary engineers.
In-floor Radiant
In-floor heat is a type of radiant heat. Pipes embedded in concrete or stapled to the underside of floors distribute hot water through the floor assembly. The floor assembly is heated and begins radiating heat to the room. This is a very comfortable type of heat, especially beloved by pets looking for a warm place to lie down, or a wet person stepping out of a shower onto a warmed floor.
Radiant in-floor heat is not able to rapidly respond to a heat demand. If you come home to a cold house, it will take the floor a long time to warm up and begin distributing heat to the room. Conversely, it will take the floor a long time to cool down when heat is no longer required. This relatively long pick-up time means that radiant floor systems are not suitable for night setback, where thermostats allow temperatures in the house to drop while you sleep or are otherwise not in the home.
Stoves
When your province seems to be 110% forest, you can be sure that people will have a wood stove in their basement or at the camp. Stoves and fireplaces contain wood fires that radiate heat into the surrounding space. More elaborate systems contain fans that distribute hot air into the room. Wood fuel has traditionally been split wood logs, but pellets are gaining an increasing share of the market.
A major benefit to wood heat is that it does not require electricity to operate. Unlike a furnace or a boiler, a wood stove will provide heat through a power outage. Wood fuel is also relatively cheap, especially if you cut it or split it yourself. A drawback to wood is controllability. Furnaces and boilers are controlled by thermostats that will set the interior temperature within a few degrees, while a traditional wood stove is much more variable.
Electric Baseboard
We come finally to one of the most popular forms of heat in New Brunswick – electric baseboards. Electric baseboard heaters act very much like radiators in that they heat up and radiate heat to the room. They are very controllable and can be precisely set to any temperature needed. Baseboards allow zoning, which means each room can be set to an different temperature. They are also relatively cheap to install compared to other forms of heating described above. These electric baseboards sound pretty great, don’t they?
The major drawback is energy cost. Electricity is expensive, and competes with fuel oil as the most expensive form of heating in our area. New homes built in the province are sometimes provided both with baseboard heaters and mini-split type heat pumps to mitigate the cost of heating.
