New homes must be energy-efficient. With a slew of new regulations and standards that have been passed across the EU, the UK, and the US, the need to efficiently and effectively heat your home is more pronounced than ever. And due to lower fuel subsidies, higher energy costs, and more incentives to reduce energy consumption, you can reduce heating costs from a thousand dollars a year to half that. We will talk about 4 most used heating system for home.
And if you want that, the first thing you need to ask yourself is this: “what’s my budget”? First-time buyers with limited means often opt for electricity, a condensing boiler or an air/water heat pump. Buyers with a more comfortable budget can opt for innovative, cutting-edge technology such as a fuel cell or an ultra-high performance boiler. After you narrow down your choices to ones within your means, the next question you need to ask yourself is, “how much energy do they consume, how efficiently, and how environmentally friendly are they?”
In this article, we’ll go over the most prominent heating solutions for your home answering all these important questions.
Table of Contents
1. Pellet Stove As Heating System
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One in four new houses uses wood for heating. The pellet stove is the simplest technical solution, and above all, the cheapest. Its heat output can be very high, and the price of wood varies little throughout the year, unlike gas or electricity.
The only drawback is that the installation of a stove is only possible under certain conditions. You can’t install pellet stoves in every house. Not to mention, if you live in an apartment, you definitely need to forget about this option.
A single pellet stove can be considered the main heating up to 100 m2 of living space. Beyond this threshold, the dispersion of the heat will be too ineffective, and additional living space will have to be heated with other heaters. Prices vary from 2,500 to 6,000 dollars/pounds/euros depending on the model you want to buy and where you live.
2. Air/Water Heat Pump
The air-water heat pump is now one of the preferred solutions for buyers looking for a competent, efficient, and environmentally friendly heating system. The principle behind how it works is simple: it captures the energy contained in the outside air and transfers it into the central heating network.
It consists of an evaporator, a compressor, a condenser and an expansion valve that operate in a closed circuit. The refrigerant agent in this circuit changes from a liquid state to a gaseous state in the evaporator, which draws heat from the air (this is how refrigerators in our homes work, too). The compressor increases the pressure of the fluid, which also increases its temperature.
In the condenser, the fluid transfers heat to the heating circuit while again recovering its liquid state. The refrigerant passes through the thermostatic expansion valve and returns to its original low-pressure, low-temperature liquid state before returning to the evaporator.
The best way to defuse and transmit the heat the system stores is through underfloor heating. You can use the same system to also cool the house in summer by investing a little extra. The price of an installation is about 12,000 dollars, which is on the upper end for a heating system, but the energy savings and the reusability of the system make it worth it.
3. Wood Pellet Boiler Heating System
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The pellet boiler most often uses pellets but there are also mixed boilers that can work with a variety of fuel sources from wood to electricity to gas. You should consider this type of heating if you have a room large enough and dry enough to accommodate a storage hopper for the pellets and the boiler.
With a large capacity silo and a sufficient amount of wood, you can rest easy for several months as everything is automated. In terms of performance, wood is generally less efficient than electricity or gas, but it is still one of the most efficient ways to heat up your home. The price of a wood pellet boiler is about 18,000 dollars.
4. Electric Boiler
The electric boiler is a central heating system. It produces heat by running currents through water. This is different from your typical boiler, which is called a combustion boiler, which relies on fire to generate heat through burning either wood, gas or oil. The electric boiler is the least expensive of the boilers, and it is more suitable for small spaces.
Like all boilers, the principle of the electric boiler is to heat up an area by moving heated water through pipelines. The water is heated centrally in the boiler and then distributed to the heating system, which is either radiators throughout the house or a floor heating system.
The water works in a closed circuit in this type of boiler. Consequently, since it purely relies on electricity, it does not produce any smoke or CO2 emissions (although, it is important to keep in mind that the electricity itself has been produced by sources that likely emit CO2, which you should keep in mind).
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Moreover, this type of boiler does not need to be connected to the gas pipelines to function. Makes this type of boiler more universally available and reduces its installation cost. A commercial electric boiler does not need a tank to store its fuel either. This is an important aspect in terms of saving space. When we talked about a wood pellet boiler, remember how we mentioned you need an entire dry room to store all the wood? You don’t need that with an electric boiler.
