Residential electric heating systems are clean, nearly one-hundred percent efficient, and easy to maintain.

Unfortunately, electric heat tends to be the most expensive heating. Generating electric heat involves inefficiencies and energy losses during conversion from fossil fuel to heat energy, from heat energy to mechanical energy, from mechanical energy to electrical energy, and finally from the transmission of electricity to your home. In the end, it would be cheaper and more efficient to burn the fossil fuel directly in your home.

Except for one mitigating factor: delivery of the fossil fuel to the home comes at a cost. In remote areas where the delivery costs of fossil fuel are high, electric heat may be a less expensive option.

Heat Pumps
An electric heat pump does not generate heat, it just collects heat from outside and moves it inside. When you heat your house with electricity, you convert one unit of electrical energy into one unit of heat energy. With a heat pump, you might then use one unit of electrical energy to collect two units of heat energy, giving you one-hundred percent more heat than you paid for! At about the freezing point, the electricity cost to pump heat into your house becomes more than the cost to generate heat directly. For this reason, heat pumps are not used in very cold climates.

Electric Furnace
An electric furnace is a simple and relatively trouble-free system. It has no heat exchanger, no gas valve, no igniters and no chimney. It simply has an electric resistance coil placed directly in the air stream. A blower moves air through the furnace and circulates the warmed air throughout the house.

Air conditioning can be added directly to the furnace, using the same ducting that circulates heat to also circulate cool air.

Electric Baseboard Heaters
Electric baseboard heaters provide heat exactly where you need it, as you need it. Baseboards allow you to set back the thermostats in the rooms you are not inhabiting, saving a significant amount of energy. Unfortunately, you cannot add air conditioning to this system without adding an independent ducting system.

Electric Hot Water Boiler
An electric hot water boiler uses electric elements to heat water. The heated water is pumped into radiators or convectors throughout the house. In terms of size, electric hot water boilers are small and inconspicuous.

Electric Radiant Heat
Today, under-floor electric radiant heat is popular in bathrooms and kitchens, usually added as accent heating rather than as the primary source of heat.

A special thank you to Jefferson Livingston with Pillar to Post Home Inspections for passing along this infomration.

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