Furnace or heat pump? Why not heat your home with both?
CBC
Can't decide whether to ditch your furnace for a heat pump? Having a hybrid system with both kinds of heating comes with advantages, say researchers and those in the HVAC industry. Here's a closer look at the pros and cons, and whether this is the right choice for your home.
Heat pumps are a very efficient form of electric heating that governments are encouraging Canadians to install through a number of incentive programs (more on that later).
That's due to a number of benefits:
Environmental: Heat pumps run on electricity, so they'll cut your carbon emissions if you're moving away from fossil fuel heating such as oil, gas or propane (reducing the impact on climate change, since fossil fuel emissions are the main cause). And they use less electricity compared to other kinds of electric heating.
Comfort: Heat pumps don't just offer heating but also cooling or air conditioning – something that more and more Canadians want or need as the Earth's temperature warms with climate change and we get more heat waves. (Canada just had its hottest summer in 76 years.)
Financial: In many cases, heat pumps can save money compared to other forms of heating, especially oil, propane and electric heating with baseboard heaters or electric furnaces, which are less efficient.
You can often combine your existing heating system with a heat pump. If they use two different sources of energy, that's called a hybrid, dual fuel or dual energy system.
Why might you want to add to your system instead of replacing it completely?
Your heating system is relatively new and you want air conditioning. This was the case for Jeremy Sager, a research engineer at CanMet Energy, a division of Natural Resources Canada, who had recently bought a new furnace, but whose air conditioner was very old and loud.
Sager, who describes himself as "quite environmentally motivated" had done research showing that gas furnace-heat pump hybrid systems can cut greenhouse gas emissions. So in October, he replaced his air conditioner with a heat pump.
Victor Hyman is executive director of the Climate Care Cooperative, which includes 30 HVAC contractors across Ontario. He recommends considering a hybrid system if your gas furnace is less than 10 years old (not close to its 12 to 15 year lifespan).
"If you've got a furnace that's five years old or younger, adding a heat pump is a no brainer," he said.
Meanwhile, he added, heat pumps are "way more efficient" at cooling than a typical air conditioner. And the grants available for heat pumps will "pick up the vast majority of the cost."
"It will cost you less today to install a very good [cold climate] heat pump than to install an average air conditioner. So please don't make that mistake."
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