March 19, 2020

The Best Electric Heating Systems

As the temperature outside dips lower and lower, you deserve a warm home to live in and enjoy your daily life. The dilemma comes when deciding the best way to keep your home warm throughout the long and blustery St. Louis winter. Natural gas furnaces are a popular and economical choice. However, natural gas furnaces can have some drawbacks, including the risk of exposure to carbon monoxide.

If you choose to heat your home with electricity instead of natural gas, it’s important to choose the electric heating system that will heat your home most efficiently. Here are a few insights into electric heating systems to help you choose the best one for your needs.

Challenges of Heating With Electricity

While heating your home with electricity eliminates the risk of an explosion or of exposing yourself to carbon monoxide, there are some challenges of heating with this fuel source. The main challenge is that traditional electric furnaces aren’t all that efficient at producing warm air when compared to natural gas furnaces.

Since natural gas furnaces can reach a higher temperature than electric furnaces, natural gas units can heat more air more efficiently. In an electric furnace, the electric resistance coils have to first reach the correct temperature before heating can begin. In a natural gas furnace, the target temperature is reached almost instantly, providing much less wasted energy.

That’s not to say that a traditional electric furnace is a bad choice in every situation. We at Scott-Lee Heating Company install electric furnaces in homes where there is no gas supply or where a customer utilizes solar panels to provide most or all of their power needs. At the same time, there is a way to utilize electricity to heat your home while achieving higher efficiencies than a natural gas furnace.

Electric Heat Pumps

Rather than using electricity to directly heat the air in your home, a more efficient option is to use electricity to perform other tasks that can efficiently heat and cool your home. This more efficient option is known as a heat pump, of which there are several varieties available.

The first type of heat pump that we at Scott-Lee Heating Company recommend is a split heat pump. This type of system uses an indoor and outdoor unit to circulate refrigerant at varying pressures. High-pressure refrigerant, which naturally has a higher temperature, is carried into the home.

When incoming air is blown over the refrigerant line, the warm refrigerant in the line warms the air. When the refrigerant returns to the outdoor unit, it is cooled, allowing it to draw heat from the outside air. This process repeats continually until the thermostat detects that the desired temperature has been reached.

Another type of heat pump that we at Scott-Lee Heating Company recommend is a mini-split heat pump. Also known as “ductless” systems, these heat pumps are designed to heat one room using a single unit mounted in the room, usually near the ceiling.

Ductless units are essentially miniaturized split heat pumps with a small exterior unit and an all-in-one interior unit. These units are great if you only need heating and cooling in specific rooms or at certain times of the day.

The last type of heat pump that you can install is a geothermal heat pump. Though these types of heat pumps are the most expensive to install, they are also the most energy-efficient. That’s because they use long pipes buried deep in the ground to draw heat in during the winter and cool the refrigerant during the summer. Since the temperature underground stays fairly constant, you are left with an always-on source of heating and cooling.

Advantages

With all three types of heat pumps, the main advantage is that you can heat and cool your home entirely with electricity in a package that’s highly energy efficient. Since you are only using electricity to draw in or expel heat instead of actively heating and cooling the air, there is far less energy required. If you have an all-electric home, then a heat pump is your best option.

At Scott-Lee Heating Company, we take pride in offering you plenty of options when it comes to heating and cooling your home. That’s why we offer a wide variety of HVAC systems for sale and can maintain and repair those systems as well.

In addition to heating and cooling, we can help make your home more comfortable through the installation of dehumidifiers, humidifiers, air cleaners, and air filtration systems. We also offer metalwork to help take care of the ductwork in your home.

With our A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, you can trust in the integrity of our work. Our over 100 5-star reviews can also give you confidence that you’ll be satisfied with our services. Give us a call today to transform the comfort of your home.