When it comes to heating your home, you have many options to choose from. Determining what furnace is best for you will highly depend on a number of factors. To ensure you pick the right one, we’re going to look at the various options you have and the factors that you should be considering when making your final decision.
The Various Types Of Furnaces Available
There are four main types of furnaces that you can utilize alongside your air conditioning system to provide your home with comfort all year round. Understanding the differences between these options is a necessity before you can choose which one you want to have installed at your home.
Central Air Furnace
If you have central air conditioning ductwork throughout your home, you can easily utilize it for heat. Central air furnaces use a resistance unit to warm the air. The warmed air gets circulated throughout your home via your ductwork. This circulation can occur with a forced setup, which requires a fan to blow the warm air throughout the ducts in your home. A gravity furnace is another central air furnace that relies on the natural flow of warm air in your home.
Hot Water Furnace
You’ll hear these systems referred to as either steam or hot water systems. These utilize steam or hot water to circulate through heating pipes in your home. These pipes can be found embedded in the walls, floors, and ceilings. Each pipe will connect to a radiator, convector, or heating coil. This is where the heat is dispersed in your home.
Heat Pump
One of the biggest crazes right now in the heating and air conditioning industry is the heat pump. This provides year-round heating and cooling for homeowners at an affordable price. A heat pump is comprised of a thermostat, a compressor, and coils found both inside and outside. This type of furnace hooks into ductwork throughout the home and pumps heat indoors in the winter and outdoors in the summer.
Pipeless Furnace
Pipeless furnaces go by many different names. Some of the most common are wall and floor furnaces. These systems provide individualized heating for the room they’re placed within. For example, a wall furnace will provide heat to both sides of the wall installed in. Floor furnaces are typically installed in the basement and allow heat to rise throughout your home naturally. You may check furnace prices here.
Understanding What Fuel Your Furnace Will Use
As you’ve learned, there are multiple furnaces out there for you to choose from. The most common fuel types for these systems are oil, gas, and electricity. Each has its positives and negatives. Let’s take a look at what some of the most common are so you can get a better feel for what type of fuel you may want to utilize at home.
Oil
Oil furnaces tend to be the most popular as oil is a highly available fuel regardless of where you live. This type of fuel is very efficient when it comes to getting the most heat from your fuel. However, since oil is derived from crude oil, its price will highly fluctuate over time. You can also expect oil furnaces to need cleaning more often than electric and natural gas furnaces.
Gas
Natural gas can be great fuel for your home furnace. Gas is fairly cheap to purchase and is widely available in many locations. It burns much cleaner than oil, which makes it environmentally friendly and healthier for your family. However, gas systems can come at a higher initial purchase price than other types of units.
Electric
This type of fuel is rising in popularity due to its ease of use and quiet operation. You don’t have to listen to a clunking old gas furnace anymore. Electrical heating starts up very quickly and can have your home heated faster than traditional gas or oil units. However, electric furnaces tend to be more expensive to run, and they emit more dry air than other furnaces. This can lead to discomfort in the winter months. Also, if the electricity goes out, so does the heat in your home.
Preparing Your Budget For A New Furnace
Before you jump into contacting your local HVAC provider, you should have a relatively decent idea of what a new furnace will cost you. This way, you can successfully prepare a budget that fits your new purchase. Let’s take a look at the varying prices for the different furnace units.
- Oil Furnace – $1,500 to $3,000
- Gas Furnace – $1,000 to $5,500
- Electric Furnace – $500 to $1,200
Apart from paying for the new furnace, you’ll need to pay your local HVAC contractor. Most contractors charge around $80 per hour to install a furnace. Many installations will take the better part of a day to install. Therefore, it’s safe to estimate that labor fees will be about half of your new furnace’s total price.
The Main Factors To Consider
Now, since you’ve been presented with the various options on the market and how much a unit typically costs, you need to think about the other factors for your decision. First is going to be the size of the unit. It would help if you found a furnace that is capable of heating your entire home comfortably. Larger homes are going to need bigger furnaces than smaller homes.
Furnaces come with many new advanced features that can be desirable for your family. For example, two-stage operations are becoming a new trend because they’re more energy-efficient than single-stage furnaces. While this may come at a higher initial cost, it can be worth its weight in gold when it comes to your energy savings. You may want to purchase a dual unit system that provides both a furnace and an air conditioner to keep your home comfortable. It’s best to talk with your local heating and air conditioner expert to determine what furnace will be ideal for your home and budget.
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