With the falling temperatures and winter season around the corner, the heating system requires attention which is a strategic system to maintain comfort and warmth inside the house. Though most household owners depend on their home heating systems day to day for residential use throughout winter, many of them fail to grasp how the system functions actually.
Here in this article, we will study the HVAC system of the house, which is a central heating and cooling unit. It comprises various components which are given below:
1. Heating Source
The heating installation of your house is typically the heating source including the furnaces, boilers, heat pumps, etc. Furnaces and boilers are commonly fuelled by natural gas, propane, or oil and they function by employing fuel to produce heat. Heat pumps do electricity work by drawing heat from the space outside or the ground, and electric heaters directly provide heat by electricity.
2. Distribution System
From making heat to moving it through the house to give the ambient temperature to each room, is done by the heating system of the house. In a typical forced-air system, the distribution system is composed of ducts through which the air is blown, but for hydronic systems, there are radiators or baseboard heaters, and finally, in-floor systems with radiant floors.
A furnace either of the forced-air or the hydronic type would use a blower fan to push hot air through ducts or vents. However, in the former case, the heating medium is heated water or steam, which is then distributed through radiators or baseboards.
3. Safety Features and Maintenance
Contemporary heating systems are punctuated with several types of safety features, and most of them intend to operate efficiently and safely. These will include a valve that relieves pressure, a sensor that detects temperature, a flame sensor, and a carbon monoxide detector, devices used for detecting potential hazards prevention. Other than that, an appropriate maintenance schedule including furnace repair is needed to ensure that you have an excellent performance of the system with the highest efficiency possible.
4. Thermostat Control
A thermostat is a control gadget for the heating system in your home for temperature setting, selecting, and managing the desired temperature in your household. Nowadays thermostats provide you with an opportunity to program the temperature changes so that you can turn the heater on only in the times when you need it, hence reducing the energy consumption levels. As a result, the thermostat passes under the set parameter and then the heating system will switch on to provide heat until the marked temperature is reached.
5. Heat Exchanger or Element
Similarly, boilers and furnaces contain heat exchangers or heaters that absorb the heat from the combustion chamber and transfer it to the air or water that travels through the air ducts or pipes. In forced-air heating or cooling systems, the heat exchanger receives heat from the combustion of fuel and then hands it over to the air passing over it.
In hydronic systems, a heat exchanger gives away the heat to water which flows through the system. This hot water or air is, then, either piped or ducted throughout your house unit for heating.
