Types of Home Heating Systems

There are really only three practical types of Home Heating Systems:

• Conventional central heating systems
• Forced air ducting
• Radiant heating systems

Conventional central heating systems rely on a series of radiators placed throughout the house usually one or more per room. These radiators can be powered by electricity, gas or oil and are designed to have large surface areas that heat the air causing convection currents that travel through the room. As heat rises the effect of these convection currents is that the ceiling is warmer than the floor and there are hotspots by the radiators. The radiators themselves take up space are are usually an eyesore.

Forced air heating gets around the problem of radiators by heating air drawn in from outside the house and circulating this air throughout the house by a series of ducting. This still produces warm ceilings and cool floors.

Radiant home heating systems are installed under, or within, the floor and act by warming the floor directly giving comfortable feet. Because the whole floor area is warmed this produces a lot of radiant heat which warms the body directly without needing to create convection air currents

The most comfortable home heating systems are radiant. They are silent in operation, don`t require radiators to be installed on the walls, and are efficient.