Heating and Cooling in the Home: A Beginner's Guide

     Your home's heating and cooling systems are divided into three categories. A gravity furnace system is one of them; a radiant heating system is another; and a ducted, or "forced air" system is the third.

The gravity furnace system moves hot air from a heater that is usually found on the ground level or in the basement of most homes. This system distributes heat and cold air throughout the house using big ducts and pipes. The heated air rises through the system, then sinks as it cools, returning to the furnace to be heated and repeating the cycle. This is also referred to as central heating and cooling. The gravity furnace can be controlled by a thermostat.

The radiant heating system, which employs water, electricity, and hot steam, is the second type of heating system. A central boiler system heats water and circulates it through tubes and pipes throughout your home, delivering heat to individual rooms via "radiator." The water returns to being heated as it cools. To provide cooling for smaller portions of the home, an air conditioner can often be installed in a window.

The electric radiant heating system is another type of radiant heating system. The electric radiant system uses electric resistance baseboards or a system of cables and foils embedded in the floors and ceilings to distribute heat throughout your home.

Ducted air systems are a third type of heating and cooling system. Because it can distribute both heated and cooled air through the ducted air system, this type of system is widespread in residential dwellings.

A geothermal system, also known as a "heat pump," uses the heat in the ground to heat and cool a home. The yard has a tube system that goes into the ground. Because the ground is cooler than the air in the summer, the heat pump cools your home by exchanging the warmer indoor temperature for the cooler outdoor temperature. The earth is warmer than the colder air temperature in the winter, thus the system extracts that heat to warm the house.

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