If you want to save money on heating during the winter, you’ve already made a great choice: you live in a state that has warm winters!
But a climate like Florida’s does present a specific challenge during winter: we still experience cool weather, enough that we need to have home heating systems, and finding a heating system that works at the best energy-efficiency for the short period it runs can be tricky. For a place where winters are often below freezing, putting in a powerful gas furnace is the easy choice. But a powerful heating system may be a wasteful heating system for Florida.
So answering the question in the title of this post is tricky. For the best heating in Wesley Chapel, FL, you’ll find the help of professionals to be invaluable. Our technicians will see that you have the right type and size of heating system to meet your needs and keep bills under control.
The Sizing Question
Sizing is key to finding a cost-effective way to heat your house. Sizing doesn’t refer to the physical size of a heater, but how powerful it is at producing heat. No matter the type of heating system you have installed, if it is underpowered or overpowered for the space it’s supposed to heat, it will waste money and perform poorly.
Avoiding a heater that’s not powerful enough to warm a house makes sense. But what about one that’s too large? This may not sound like a big problem, but it’s one of the main ways people trip up in finding a heating system for their house. An oversized unit will too rapidly raise the temperature in a home, causing the thermostat to falsely register that it’s completed its heating cycle and shut it off early, only to turn it back on again a short time later. This creates a rapid stop-start process called short-cycling. Because a heater draws on the most power at start-up, a short-cycling heater will drain immense amounts of energy and raise utility bills. It will also cause the heater to wear down faster.
To properly size a heater, professionals must perform a heat load calculation and apply the results to find the right size of system.
Heater Type
Now you know that the heater’s size is important. What about the heating system type? You have several choices:
- Gas furnace
- Electric furnace
- Heat pump
- Ductless mini split
All have advantages and disadvantages. Gas furnaces are powerful and fast at heating homes, but must have a natural gas line available to them. They also cost more than electric furnaces to install; although electric furnaces cost more to run, in the Florida climate this may not present a serious problem. Heat pumps are combined heating and cooling systems and can save money for an all-electric home, but they must replace both the heater and AC to be worthwhile. Ductless mini splits are heat pumps that work as alternatives in homes without space for ductwork.
You can trust our technicians to give you honest answers about your heating needs and the system that will meet them while also providing energy savings.
Experience the Balanced Air difference! We’ve served the Tampa Bay Area since 1988.
