Whether you want to add value to your home, cut back on your energy costs or just want more warmth this fall and winter, replacement or enhancement of your home’s heating system can do the job.
Manufacturers offer methods and products to suit every situation.
As the cost of fuel oil hits record highs, most Western Washington residents are thankful they live in a region where oil-fueled furnaces and boilers are uncommon.
Homeowners in eastern states have been rushing to retrofit these systems, either with complete replacements or just some additional zone heating.
“There are literally lines outside of stove dealers because of the oil prices,” said Pat Martin, general manager of Monroe Fireplace &Stove. “Heating oil right now is just a killer.”
Rod Anderson, owner of Anderson Fireplace &Spas, sees the same trend. He said, “Because of the cost of heating oil, mostly on the East Coast, there’s actually been a shortage of wood and pellet stoves this year.”
This temporary shortage hasn’t stopped area residents from upgrading their own wood stoves before winter. In fact, many are scrambling to take advantage of the
Puget Sound Clean Air Agency’s new wood stove replacement program. Financial incentives start at $750 to help you replace your old uncertified wood stove if you live in certain designated areas including parts of Marysville, Everett and Darrington.
Of course, not everyone uses a wood stove. Local heating businesses have been helping consumers decide which products are the most convenient and efficient for them. There is no single method or product that is going to work in every situation.
Houses, like people, are unique. Age, structure, existing heating systems and zoning requirements help to dictate the type of heating you can use.
The simplest thing to do in a remodel is to upgrade to a more efficient version of whatever heating is already present in the home. For example, if your home does not have existing ducting, it’s not worth it to have it added.
There are many types of heating systems that don’t use ducts at all. Most of these are far more efficient than traditional forced air. However, if you have ducting, you may want to upgrade to a more efficient forced air unit than you currently own, or you can switch to a heat pump.
Most new homes are heated by the forced-air heating method. In some cases these are matched with central air conditioning units. In a forced air system, a series of ducts convey air to a furnace or boiler where it is warmed and returned to the house through still more ducts.
One of the benefits to this type of heating is that the circulating air can be heavily filtered. This not only keeps your house cleaner, but it can also be beneficial to allergy and asthma sufferers.
Forced air heating usually features a thermostat timer that can automatically adjust the times that your home is heated. While you’re at work, the heat can go off. The timer can switch it on so the home heats up before your return.
The thermostat can also monitor and adjust the temperature automatically so it stays constant. This type of heating involves very little maintenance for the homeowner beyond filter changes and annual professional inspection.
A drawback to forced air heat is that it is not very efficient. Homeowners find they are heating more rooms of the house than they really need to. Even if you close vents to certain rooms, there is some amount of heat leakage into those areas. Also, the entire ducting system is kept full of warm air every time the furnace functions. This includes the ducts to those areas of the house you aren’t using.
Another mark of efficiency is the percentage of fuel that is actually converted to heat in your home. Newer furnaces are more efficient at this. Some models can achieve up to 97 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. For this reason, it is recommended you look for Energy Star rating labels before you purchase something new. In order to qualify as an Energy Star furnace, they must show an annual fuel utilization efficiency rating (or AFUE) of more than 80 percent or higher.
The most common fuel sources for furnaces in our area are gas or electricity.
Electricity can be prohibitively expensive. Gas is known as a cleaner, more cost-effective fuel, and one that tends to be readily available in the Northwest.
It’s important to keep in mind that both electric and gas furnaces are vulnerable to power outages. Gas furnaces traditionally rely on electric fans and blowers. While the gas may still be available, fans stop functioning when the power is out.
George Clayton, owner of Hometown Heating in Marysville, recommends having a secondary form of heat to rely on during a power outage. “A wood stove or a pellet stove,” Clayton said. “And a back-up supply of fuel for it.”
Heat pumps, too, cease to function during power outages. But they are an extremely energy-efficient source of heat. They work something like a refrigerator in reverse. The heat pump can gather heat and move it from one place to another. In the case of heating your home, the pump is able to gather warm air (even on cold days) from outdoors and magnify and broadcast it to the indoors through a ducting system.
Because they don’t actually generate the heat, but simply collect and redistribute it, heat pumps can provide nearly four times the amount of heat energy they consume.
This makes them a great choice for energy-conscious consumers.
There are now some newer heat pumps that don’t require ducting systems at all.
They are called mini-split heat pumps. Because they don’t have to fill an entire duct with warm air, they tend to be a lot more efficient. They can also be zoned to the rooms you use most.
Regardless of which kind of heat pump you choose, they all provide a gentle, constant temperature in the house rather than a surge of warmth. Homeowners usually like to add an additional back-up heat source for bitterly cold weather or for use during power outages.
The two most reliable forms of heat are wood and pellet stoves. As long as you keep them clean and have a supply of fuel to burn in them, they work. It provides peace of mind for the homeowner.
New stove models are nothing like their predecessors. They’re highly energy-efficient and burn far cleaner than in the past. They also are available in highly decorative forms to enhance home decor.
“Free-standing styles are the most popular option for heating,” Pat Martin said, “but a substantial amount of our business is putting insets in existing fireplaces.”
Most people make their decision between the two fuel-burning options based on availability. If you have a source of wood — your own wood lot for example — fuel costs for a wood burning stove are a non-issue. If you plan to buy bundles of pre-split wood at the local grocery, hardware or feed store, you are going to pay heartily and would be better off purchasing pellets.
The most affordable way to get wood for your stove is to look through newspaper and online ads. Find people with wood they need removed from their property and cut, split and haul it yourself. Wood also has to be aged, stored, stacked and kept dry. Scrap lumber is not safe to burn, because it may be treated with fire retardants and other chemicals.
Stoves also have to be set, lit and cleaned out regularly. You have to safely dispose of the ashes. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, you should also have a professional servicing once a year. This is to clean and inspect flues.
Your labor and maintenance return on a new catalytic wood stove is an efficiency rating of 70 percent or higher. They are very good at heating a large area. Fewer fans and moving parts mean less need for need servicing. They also offer the homeowner peace of mind against power failures.
Finally, wood stoves have a high aesthetic appeal. Few things are nicer than the sight and smell of a crackling wood fire on a cold night. It makes sense to harness that energy in a wood stove rather than let it disappear up an open fireplace flue.
A keen rival to the wood stove is a pellet stove. The type of pellets that fuel these stoves don’t have to be made only of wood. They can include agricultural waste such as sawdust, nutshells, corn byproducts and other organic materials. This makes them very eco-friendly.
Pellet stoves also tend to be more efficient than wood stoves. Pellets are easier to handle, they burn cleaner and produce less waste. It’s also far easier to control temperatures on a pellet stove. They can often be direct-vented, eliminating the need for an expensive chimney or flue. That means more flexibility at installation.
“You can do pellet anywhere,” Martin said. “We sell a number of pellet stoves to people in apartments.”
The obvious appeal for apartment and condo dwellers is fuel storage. A large sack of pellets takes up far less space than a cord of wood. Far less labor is required to keep a pellet stove going as well.
A drawback of pellet stoves is that they have more moving parts, including fans.
These can break over time and require occasional professional cleaning. This can be done at the same time as your annual flue inspection and cleaning. These moving parts are usually powered by electricity, so it is important to ask a sales professional whether the stove can function during power failures.
Natural gas is another alternative energy source often found in stoves. According to Martin, gas stove sales have recently slowed down, but natural gas is still the cheapest energy source, relative to pellet. Whether natural gas or propane, the emissions levels from a gas stove are far less than from their wood or pellet cousins.
Gas stoves also require little maintenance. Homeowners need to clean the glass, but that’s about it. Most turn on at the flip of a switch. As with pellet stoves, electric fans are often used to move warm air into the room. Check with a sales professional about how various models react during power outages.
Any of the three stove types — wood, pellet or gas — can also be installed as a fireplace insert. Open fireplaces are not considered safe or healthy by EPA standards. They’re also very inefficient at heating a room, because most heat escapes up the chimney. Installation of a wood, pellet or gas insert is not only attractive, but it also converts an inefficient heat source into an efficient secondary form of heat.
Martin said, “I have a furnace in my house but I have a gas fireplace that heats my general living space. The furnace is really just there as a supplement in a sense.”
Forced air, heat pumps and stoves are the main heating types found in Western Washington residences. But there are some other forms of heating that are gaining in popularity.
Radiant heating systems can be applied in walls or floors, but are most commonly used in floors. There are three main types of radiant floor heat. Each uses a different medium for transport. Air heated radiant floors are less efficient and less common. Electric and hot water (hydronic) systems are more common and very efficient.
These three types of radiant heat are installed under the floors in one of two ways.
A wet installation means the system of electric heating wires or hot water tubing is buried in a cement subfloor. Dry installations put the radiant system under a plywood floor.
Radiant heat is very efficient as the heat naturally rises up through the floor of the home. It’s consistent and gentle but easily controlled. Lack of fans and blowers to distribute heat means there is less dust spread throughout the home — good news for allergy sufferers. Hydronic systems use little electricity. They also require little maintenance.
The main drawback to an under-the-floor radiant heat system is that it can be difficult to install in an existing home. Like many other forms of heating, it also ceases to function during a power failure. This option is more suited to new construction and add-ons.
Another form of heating that has become better known is geothermal heat.
Snohomish County PUD recently held workshops to promote this clean, renewable form of heating. Residential geothermal heating systems are sometimes referred to as earth heat pumps or geo-exchangers. They can take the constant temperature below the ground, compress it to a higher temperature and redistribute it into your home.
Companies such as EarthHeat in Duvall have been gaining national attention for these efficient and environmentally friendly systems. One of these systems is in use at Redmond High School, and another is being installed at the Woodland Park zoo. One drawback to the system is the cost of installation, but this seems to be falling.
Although our region is not known for long stretches of sunny weather, solar heating is a viable alternative. Solar collection systems collect and absorb solar heat, then transfer it either directly to the interior space or to a storage system. While solar is not reliable when used as a sole source of heat, it can significantly reduce your fuel bills, enough to make it a viable proposition.
A drawback to solar systems is the initial cost of installation. However, once installed, the monetary savings are such that it pays for itself over time. Solar heat should be thought of as an investment.
A final way to heat your home is with the use of space heaters. Other than certified wood, pellet and gas stoves that technically fall into the space heater category, the only type of really safe space heater that is popular for home heating is electric.
Natural gas wall heaters are no longer popular. Due to carbon monoxide danger, kerosene and other similar heaters are not safe for use inside your home.
Oil-filled electric heaters tend to be very safe and generate enough heat to fill a room. Electric baseboard heaters are also quite safe and reliable. However, small portable heaters like these are only energy efficient if you plan to heat a single small space.
No matter which heating system you choose, there is one important factor that can affect how much you save on your heating bill. Even if you buy the highest efficiency system on the market, it is not going to save you money in a house that is not well insulated.
Duct systems should all have an insulation blanket to keep the heat in the ducts and not escaping out into crawlspaces. Extra insulation in your walls, attic and even under your floors means heat stays in where you need it. The less you have to use your heating system, the more money you’ll save and the more comfortable you’ll be.
Monroe Fireplace &Stove
19922 Highway 2
Monroe, WA 98272
(360) 794-8024
Anderson Fireplace &Spa
1110 N. Broadway
Everett, WA 98201
(425) 259-4619
Hometown Heating
14125 Smokey Point Blvd.
Marysville, WA 98271
(360) 659-6901
EarthHeat
15728 Main St. NE
Duvall, WA 98019
(425) 788-5214
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