The Art Of Picking And Installing A Heating System
ShareHeating installation work should involve more than just picking a unit for your house and letting a professional tackle the job. Several choices need to be made to ensure your heating system installation project will be a success. Output and efficiency concerns, in particular, should drive your choice of a system.
How Many BTUs of Output Are Needed?
Providing heat in a house or a place of business requires a fairly simple calculation. British thermal units, more commonly called BTUs, are the preferred measurement for the transfer of heat in both cooling and heating units. Every system on the market today will have a yellow sticker on the unit and the box that provides details about its output and efficiency.
The U.S. government breaks the country up into 5 zones to simplify understanding what your heating needs will be. You can find that information by checking our the map labeled "AIA Climate Zones -- RECS 1978-2005" on the Energy Information Administration's website.
Buildings in Zone 1 require between 30 and 35 BTUs of heat per square foot. Zone 2 requires 35 to 40 BTUs, Zone 3 requires 40 to 45 BTUs, Zone 4 requires 40 to 50 BTUs and Zone 5 requires 50 to 60 BTUs.
To figure out how many BTUs of output you need, calculate the square footage of your place has. Each floor should be counted separately so a two-story house with an 800 square-foot footprint would be 1,600 square feet total. Multiply that number by the BTU requirement for your zone. If the example home were situated in Zone 2, it would need 64,000 BTUs of total heating output to provide a comfortable living space during the coldest months.
Efficiency
The Annualized Fuel Efficiency rating is a number that will also appear on the aforementioned yellow sticker. If it has an 85 on it, for example, that means that 85% of the fuel used by the system produces heat and the remaining 15% is wasted or lost due to inefficiencies in the system. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, anything with a rating below 90 is not considered to be a high-efficiency system.
Efficiency matters because your biggest cost over time will be fuel. Particularly in spaces that are cold and drafty, a higher efficiency system will be better contained. Always opt for a high-efficiency unit because the long-term cost-of-ownership will make up for the upfront expense of a better unit.