Home Heating systems in the modern home

Modern Day Construction for custom homes Part 18

In today’s modern world of construction things are changing year to year faster than they did decade to decade in any other previous time period. In this multi part series I will traverse through an entire house starting with the foundation and working my way up to the roof and then to the finishing’s. I will explain what has changed in the last twenty years in custom home building.

One thing that you should be able to take away from this is how important it is to not just hire the right general contractor to build your custom home but how important it is to hire one that is up on today’s building methods.

Home Heating Systems 

Twenty years ago you had limited options for heating, depending on where you lived. Electric baseboard and electric forced air furnaces were the norm. Also a lot rural houses had oil furnaces. Low to medium natural gas furnaces where starting to become more common in the larger cities.

Today there is a plethora of heating options, depending on where you build your house. Here are the most popular ones;

• Ground source heat or Geothermal heating. Geothermal heating is a newer idea in North America, it has been used in places like Iceland for decades. The basic principal of it is that pipes are installed 8 feet in the ground outside of your home, depending on the size of the home will determine the size and amount of loops of pipe you will require. The pipes travel from the outside through your basement wall into your furnace. The liquid inside of the pipes absorbs the heat out of the ground, it is then circulated back to the furnace where it is pressurized and then fed through the furnace. The furnace blows air across these lines using the heat from the lines to warm up the air that is passing through the furnace into your duct work, this warm air is what warms up your home. If the system is run in reverse you receive air conditioning in the summer from the lines absorbing the cold from the earth. This is the most efficient heating system known today. It runs on electricity but barely uses enough electricity for you to notice on your electrical bill. The pipes can also be run into your hot water tank giving you free hot water in the summer time. This system when installed in the country is installed 8 ft under the ground in a field or in a pond that is at least 8 ft deep or if you are on a large body of water like a lake or a large river. In town it can be used by drilling wells vertically into the ground. This system is the best system you can have for heating, but it is also costs the most to install as well.

• High efficiency natural gas furnace. This furnace is the best bang for your buck. Natural gas furnaces have come a long way in the past two decades, they use very little gas to make a lot of heat compared to they older models. The units are also significantly smaller than most other types of furnaces, they do not take up a lot of space in a mechanical room. The duct work is usually larger than the furnace. You can only get natural gas if you live in town or close enough to town that there is a natural gas line installed on your road. You also have to make sure that the furnace can be properly vented, you will have to clear the snow away from the intake and exhaust ports in the winter. Natural gas furnaces do not do air conditioning; you will require a separate electric air conditioner on the outside of your house.

• Propane furnace. Propane furnaces are a cheaper option for people that have no access to natural gas and cannot afford geothermal. Propane is about a quarter of the efficiency of natural gas and is on par with oil furnaces. You will have to have a large propane storage tank installed on your property and have it filled once or twice a year depending on your heating requirements. Propane furnaces just like natural gas furnaces do not do air conditioning. You will require a separate electric air conditioner on the outside of your house.

• Oil Furnaces. Oil furnaces are still used in rural areas. Oil furnaces have become more efficient in the last two decades. But they require you to have a holding tank installed in the basement of your house. Oil furnaces can be smelly and if they are not taken care of properly there can be oil leaks. Insurance companies have raised the premiums on them because of the potential liability of oil spill clean ups in and around your home. Oil furnaces do not do air conditioning, a separate electric air conditioner on the outside of your home will need to be installed.

• In-floor radiant heat. There are two types of in-floor radiant heat, natural gas and geothermal. In floor heat is basically pipes laid under your flooring that have water circulated through them at a certain temperature. This warms the floor up which in turn warms the air above it. This is a wonderful way to heat a home because you are heating the air at the floor and since warm air always rises you always have warm air rising past you. So with in-floor radiant heat you never have cold spots in the home, the heat is evenly distributed throughout the home.

• Air source heat pumps. This is a unit that runs on electricity that converts the air outside to heat or cooling in the same way the geothermal does. It is not as efficient as geothermal but can be cheaper to install, it is more efficient than just a propane, electric or oil furnace on its own, but it is also more expensive to purchase in the beginning. Heat pumps work best when paired with a furnace to help move air around the home. Heat pumps do air conditioning as well and usually do it extremely efficiently. Newer models of heat pumps coming on the market are extremely efficient and are able to make heat out of air as cold as -30 c.

Look for part 19 coming soon....

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.

Heating your custom home in the country

Series: Tips on designing a country home.

In this multi-part series I will help give you tips on how to go about having a custom home built in the country, where it should sit, what it should look like, how it should function and what type of home performs the best and fits in with the surrounding country side.

Heating your country home

When building a custom home in the country you will be limited in what type of heating system that you will be able to install. The most economical heating for new homes (when balancing price and cost of use) is a high efficiency natural gas furnace; unfortunately in a rural setting you usually do not have access to a natural gas line. This makes the choices for your country home limited. It doesn’t mean that you cannot have efficient heat it just means that you have to be smart on what you install for a heating system.

Here are the typical options for rural country custom homes these days

• Geothermal heating. The most popular option in heating today for custom homes in a rural setting is Geothermal heating. Geothermal heating in basic terms is piping filled with an ethanol based mixture that is placed under the ground; the ethanol mixture is then circulated through the pipes allowing the liquid mixture to absorb the heat from the ground in the winter and the cold from the ground in the summer. The pipes feed the mixture into a furnace which blows air over the lines turning the air either warmer or colder depending on your needs. The ductwork to move the air around is the same as any other furnace system. The result; an extremely efficient heating and cooling system, it is actually more efficient then a high efficiency natural gas furnace. It runs on electricity so there is no need to have storage tanks or gas lines running under the ground. When you use your air conditioning in the summer it generates extra heat that is fed into a hot water tank which supplies you with FREE HOTWATER all summer. There are several different ways to have a geothermal system, there is the most popular way of ground loops, this is the most cost effective way but requires you to have some acreage to install the system.
If you are on a small rural lot then you can install drilled well geothermal, this process consists of drilling small wells straight into the earth and then pumping the ethanol solution down into the wells to absorb the heat or the cold of the ground. The down side to this is that it is the most expensive option of geothermal heating.
The third way you can do it is installing the pipes at the bottom of a pond or into a larger body of water. This is fairly inexpensive compared to drilling wells but can be problematic if the pond has a lot of organic material that will settle itself on top of the lines blocking the absorption of heat. The downside to geothermal is the installation cost; it is by far the most expensive of all the home heating options to install. You can also have in-floor hot water radiant heat from a geothermal system.

• Propane furnace. Propane furnaces consist of a furnace that burns propane in the same way that a natural gas furnace does and is transported around the home in a typical ductwork. The propane gas is kept in a large storage tank that it outside next to your home and deliveries the propane through a gas line that is buried under the ground until it enters your home. A propane company is needed to come and re-fill the large tank every time it runs low. Propane is not as efficient as natural gas or geothermal. Natural gas is 4 times as efficient then propane, propane can add up to a lot when needed to heat a whole house through the winter. The upside of a propane furnace is that it is fairly cheap to have installed compared to geothermal. You can also have a propane flash boiler installed that can supply your home with in-floor radiant heating.

• Oil furnace. Oil furnace work a lot the same as a propane furnace and they us a typical duct system to distribute the heat around the home. The oil tanks are not allowed to be installed outside of your home anymore; they must be installed inside the home so that they are less likely to be damaged. Oil furnaces are about the same efficiency as propane furnaces, the problem that you can get into is if you ever have a leak (you basically have an oil spill in your home). Insurance companies these days are less and less likely to give you a good rate on your home insurance if you have an oil furnace and some insurance companies will refuse to give home insurance altogether as long as there is a working oil furnace in the home. Oil furnaces are not that expensive to install when building your home.

• Combination air source heat pump and propane furnace. This is a great option for people who are budget conscious but still want to save on energy bills into the future. An air source heat pump is a device that takes the heat from the air outside and passes it into the furnace; it does this using the same basic principles as geo-thermal ethanol filled lines. This is highly efficient because it doesn’t require propane to make heat. One of the downsides to an air source heat pump is that when the air outside becomes too cold then the heat pump has no heat to remove from the air. This is when the propane furnace kicks in to add heat to the furnace. For the cost of an air source heat pump you get an almost immediate return with the savings of not burning propane. One of the other things that air source heat pumps do is make cold air in the summer months. So when you buy a heat pump to reduce your energy consumption you also get an air conditioner for the summer months for the same price.

These are the most common heating for the country custom homes.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.