You’re considering making a change to how you heat and cool your home: a ductless mini split system. Maybe this is a full-house change, plans for a new house, or you only want to install ductless to target a certain area that needs additional comfort assistance. Whatever the reason for considering a ductless installation, you still have a reservation about how well a ductless system works for heating.
We’ll explain a bit about how ductless systems operate to see how well one can provide you with heat.
The Ductless Air Conditioning System
One reason you may be concerned about if a ductless mini split system can heat your home is that you’ve heard it called ductless cooling before. Ductless mini splits are refrigerant-based systems that operate similarly to how a standard AC works, which is the movement of heat through a set of indoor coils to be released through a set of outdoor coils. Mini splits do this with multiple indoor units rather than a single indoor unit hooked up to ductwork.
There are ductless systems on the market that only provide cooling, a.k.a. ductless air conditioning systems. But these are not the standard types installed in homes and are usually only available in regions where winters are so mild that homes often don’t have anything stronger for winter than electric wall heaters. The ductless systems that we install are all types of heat pumps, which means they can reverse the direction they move heat so they also move heat into a house. You get cooling and heating in one.
The Heating Effectiveness of a Ductless System
Now we’ve established that a ductless system will provide your home with heat when you need it. But is it effective as a heater, compared to, say, an electric furnace?
To answer that, we have to go back to talking about heat pumps in general, whether they use ducts or not. A heat pump draws the thermal energy it uses to heat the indoor of a building from the air outside. This sounds a bit odd at first, because when a home needs heating the air outdoors will be cold. However, there is always thermal energy available, no matter how cold the outside gets—the heat pump can provide the warmth needed. It may lose some energy efficiency in extreme cold weather, but heat pump technology is getting better and better at overcoming this.
In fact, compared to an electric furnace, a ductless mini split can save a household a good deal of money. This is because a ductless heat pump only uses electricity to move heat rather than generate it, and this requires much less electric power.
Personalized Heating Service
We have to stress that there’s no such thing as a heating system that works for all homes, and a ductless mini split may still not be the correct fit for your needs. We can provide the HVAC service in Howell, MI to help you locate the ideal heating and cooling for your specific requirements.
First Choice Heating & Cooling is here for all your home comfort needs. If your home had a voice … it would call First Choice!