First Choice Heating & Cooling Blog: Archive for January, 2020

What Zone Control Does for an HVAC System

Monday, January 20th, 2020

worker-with-ductsZone controls give you more power to control how your house is heated and cooled. An HVAC system without zone controls provides general heating and cooling to the house whenever it is turned on. Each room vent in the house sends out conditioned air, regardless of whether the rooms require it or not. You’re familiar with this system because you probably have one like it. On a cold day in winter, when you turn the furnace on for warmth, all the rooms in the house receive heat blown through the ventilation system.

This is convenient—but you can probably already tell why it isn’t always for the best. Would you want an electrical system where flipping a single light switch turns on every light in the house? Of course not, that’s wasteful. Do you need to accept the same type of operation from your HVAC system? Not when you have zone controls.

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Electric vs. Gas Furnace Efficiency—There’s a Trick to It

Monday, January 6th, 2020

money-saving-chimneyAre you looking to have a new heating system installed in your house? If you are, one of the most important bits of information you’ll want to find out about potential models is their efficiency. A high-efficiency furnace uses less energy to provide more heat, and therefore costs less to run.

Or at least, that’s what it seems to mean.

The truth is a bit more complicated. Efficiency is a rating of the heating output of a furnace compared to the amount of energy it uses. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a furnace with a higher efficiency rating will automatically cost less to run. A good example of this is the difference in the efficiency ratings of gas furnaces and electric furnaces.

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