A guide to buying electric heating systems

Electric heating systems are one method that you can use to heat air in your house. Heating and cooling systems have a few things in common. They both provide temperature controlled air, they both make use of thermostats, and they both have a way of getting the air into the rooms of the house. Furthermore, both of them need a source of energy, like oil, wood, coal, gas, or electricity. When considering how you want to go about heating air, the following tips can help you to choose if an electrical system is right for you.

How electrical heaters work

Heaters that use fuel, like gas, wood, oil, or coal, burn that fuel and circulate the heat that is produced. Electric heaters have elements, which are strips made of nickel and chromium, which will heat up the air. Some heaters of the past would use the heat to make hot water and use that to heat the air in your house. These older systems had boilers that moved the hot water through pipes in the ceiling, floor, or wall.

The types of systems

There are several ways to get heated or cooled air into all the rooms of a house. These are forced air, radiant, or gravity systems. Forced air systems Forced air uses a blower to force the air through the ducts in the house. There is also ductwork that takes the air that is being replaced back to the heater or air conditioner to be heated or cooled as needed. Gravity systems Gravity systems work on the fact that warm air rises and cool air sinks. Gravity systems are only used for heating the home, not for cooling it. The cool air at the bottom of a room travels through the return air ducts to be heated again. Radiant system The radiant system uses hot water in pipes to heat the air in the house through the floor, ceiling, walls, or radiators. Some of these systems use electrically heated panels. Radiant systems, like gravity systems, are only used for heating.

Thermostats

Thermostats are needed for any type of heating or cooling system no matter what heating installations or heating company that you use. They regulate the temperature in your home with a switch that is very sensitive to temperature. This switch is a strip of material made from two different metals. The strip will contract or expand according to the temperature. When this happens, a switch will be activated to either turn the heated or cooled air on or off.