Warm-air heating

Because of its low density, air carries less heat for shorter distances than do hot water or steam. The use of air as the primary heat conveyor is nevertheless the rule in American homes and offices, though there has been a growing preference for hot-water systems, which have been used in European countries for some time. The heat of the furnace is transferred to the air in ducts, which rise to rooms above where the hot air is emitted through registers. The warm air from a furnace, being lighter than the cooler air around it, can be carried by gravity in ducts to the rooms, and until about 1930 this was the usual method employed. But a gravity system requires ducts of rather large diameter (20–36 cm [8–14 inches]) in order to reduce air friction, and this resulted in the basement’s being filled with ductwork. Moreover, rooms distant from the furnace tended to be underheated, owing to the small pressure difference between the heated supply air and cooler air returning to the furnace. These difficulties were solved by the use of motor-driven fans, which can force the heated air through small, compact, rectangular ducts to the most distant rooms in a building. The heated air is introduced into individual rooms through registers, grilles, or diffusers of various types, including arrangements resembling baseboards along walls. Air currents through open doors and return air vents help distribute the heat evenly. The warm air, after giving up its heat to the room, is returned to the furnace. The entire system is controlled by thermostats that sample temperatures and then activate the gas burner and the blowers that circulate the warm air through ducts. An advantage of forced warm-air heating is that the air can be passed through filters and cleaned as it circulates through the system. And if the ductwork is propery sized, the addition of a cooling coil connected to suitable refrigeration machinery easily converts the system to a year-round air-conditioning system.

Air also works in conjunction with other systems. When the primary heated medium is steam or hot water, forced air propelled by fans distributes heat by convection (air movement). Even the common steam radiator depends more on convection than on radiation for heat emission.

Hot-water heating

Water is especially favoured for central-heating systems because its high density allows it to hold more heat and because its temperature can be regulated more easily. A hot-water heating system consists of the boiler and a system of pipes connected to radiators, piping, or other heat emitters located in rooms to be heated. The pipes, usually of steel or copper, feed hot water to radiators or convectors, which give up their heat to the room. The water, now cooled, is then returned to the boiler for reheating. Two important requirements of a hot-water system are (1) provision to allow for the expansion of the water in the system, which fills the boiler, heat emitters, and piping, and (2) means for allowing air to escape by a manually or automatically operated valve. Early hot-water systems, like warm-air systems, operated by gravity, the cool water, being more dense, dropping back to the boiler, and forcing the heated lighter water to rise to the radiators. Neither the gravity warm-air nor gravity hot-water system could be used to heat rooms below the furnace or boiler. Consequently, motor-driven pumps are now used to drive hot water through the pipes, making it possible to locate the boiler at any elevation in relation to the heat emitters. As with warm air, smaller pipes can be used when the fluid is pumped than with gravity operation.

Steam heating

Steam systems are those in which steam is generated, usually at less than 35 kilopascals (5 pounds per square inch) in the boiler, and the steam is led to the radiators through steel or copper pipes. The steam gives up its heat to the radiator and the radiator to the room, and the cooling of the steam condenses it to water. The condensate is returned to the boiler either by gravity or by a pump. The air valve on each radiator is necessary to allow air to escape; otherwise it would prevent steam from entering the radiator. In this system, both the steam supply and the condensate return are conveyed by the same pipe. More sophisticated systems use a two-pipe distribution system, keeping the steam supply and the condensate return as two separate streams. Steam’s chief advantage, its high heat-carrying capacity, is also the source of its disadvantages. The high temperature (about 102° C [215° F]) of the steam inside the system makes it hard to control and requires frequent adjustments in its rate of input to the rooms. To perform most efficiently, steam systems require more apparatus than do hot-water or warm-air systems, and the radiators used are bulky and unattractive. As a result, warm air and hot water have generally replaced steam in the heating of homes built from the 1930s and ’40s.

Electric heat

Electricity can also be used in central heating. Though generally more expensive than fossil fuels, its relatively high cost can be offset by the use of electric current when normal demand decreases, either at night or in the wintertime—i.e., when lighting, power, and air-conditioning demands are low and there is excess power capacity in regional or local electrical grids. The most common method of converting electricity to heat is by resistors, which become hot when an electric current is sent through them and meets resistance. The current is automatically activated by thermostats in the rooms to be heated. Resistors can be used to heat circulating air or water, or, in the form of baseboard convectors, they can directly heat the air along the walls of an individual room, establishing convective currents.

Heat pump

Another method for heating with electricity involves the use of the heat pump. Every refrigeration machine is technically a heat pump, pumping heat from an area of lower temperature (normally the space to be cooled or refrigerated) to an area of higher temperature (normally, the outdoors). The refrigeration machine may be used to pump heat, in winter, from the outdoor air, or groundwater, or any other source of low-temperature heat, and deliver this heat at higher temperature to a space to be heated. Usually, the heat pump is designed to function as an air conditioner in summer, then to reverse and serve as a heat pump in winter.

A heat pump’s operations can be explained using the following example. The typical window-mounted air-conditioning unit has a heat-rejection unit (condenser) mounted outside. This unit discharges the heat removed by the indoor coil (evaporator) to the outside air. Therefore the evaporator subtracts heat from the residence and transfers it to the refrigerant gas, which is pumped to the outside condenser, where by means of a fan the heat is dissipated in the air outside. This cycle can be inverted: heat is subtracted from the outside air and is transferred via the refrigerant gas to the indoor coil (evaporator) and discharged into a residence’s ductwork by means of the evaporator fan. This is a basic heat-pump system. Where winter climates reach freezing temperatures, however, the system is limited by the freezing of the condenser (outdoor coil);. thus, heat pumps work best in mild climates with fairly warm winter temperatures. The complexity of their machinery also makes them uneconomical in many contexts.