8 Most Cost-Efficient Ways to Heat a Home

During the cold season, one of the factors that contribute to high utility bills in most homes is the cost involved in keeping the house warm.

This comes as no surprise because as humans, we naturally feel more comfortable in a warm and cozy environment, especially after a stressful day out in the cold.

While there are different ways to heat a home, the most popular way to go about it is by simply investing in a home heating system. By definition, home heating systems are setups designed to give warmth to the interior of a building. This can be the entire building or a selected number of rooms.

They come in various categories and can either run on renewable or nonrenewable forms of energy. The cost of purchasing and maintaining a home heating system can be expensive, and the price varies, depending on the type of system and the energy used to run the system.

While keeping a home warm is a necessity (especially during the winter period), choosing a cost-efficient way of going about it can be quite a challenge. This is even truer in recent times that the drifting changes in global climate have discouraged the use of fossil fuels, thereby increasing the cost of running some heat systems.

As a homeowner, choosing a cost-efficient heating system is a decision you will need to make in preparation for the winter period. Making such decisions will help to bring down the cost of your utility bill while saving you tons of money.

In this article, we shall be discussing the top 8 most cost-efficient ways to heat your home. Hence, the article will help to guide you in making the right decision whether you are planning to change your old and inefficient heating system or you’re just looking out for an efficient way to keep your new apartment warm without burning a hole in your pocket.

 

What is the Most Cost Efficient Way to Heat a Home?

The following are the best ways to heat a home and save cost.

 

1. Sealing All Leaks

This process generally involves checking the ceilings, walls, floors, doors, and windows for air leaks. All possible openings where air from outside can easily find its way into the apartment are then sealed. This step is mostly ignored by many, but it is the first thing one should consider before investing in any form of heating system.

Therefore, ignoring this can make even the most expensive heating system function ineffectively. While this process might seem stressful at times, you can employ the service of professional energy auditors who will thoroughly inspect your house for possible air leaks by using the necessary tools and devices.

They also offer recommendation services by recommending the best heating system for your home. They equally give the analysis of how much it will cost to run and maintain the heating system.

 

  2. Surface Induction

This is another cheap but efficient way of keeping your home warm, particularly if you live in areas where the temperature is mostly moderately cold. This involves simply doubling your floor rugs (or buying a new one made with thicker material), changing your window curtains to ones made of thick materials, and insulating your walls, doors, windows, ceilings, and arctic.

This is a very effective and efficient way of keeping your house warm. It might just be all you need to keep your home warm during cold periods.

 

3. Wood Heating

Wood is a very cheap and available source of fuel. It is the most popular source of renewable energy in most countries. Wood can serve as fuel for fireplaces and woodstoves, which are used to keep the house warm. Unlike other forms of heating systems, fireplaces and woodstoves primarily warm the room they are kept.

They can also be dangerous and should not be left running without supervision. They can easily pollute the air (especially the older ones) and can also be quite messy, requiring extra work to keep them tidy.

Therefore, when purchasing a woodstove or setting up a fireplace as a homeowner, it is important to opt-in for the modern ones because they run more efficiently and produce less pollution.

 

4. Heat Pumps

Heat pumps are electrical devices that pull air from the environment, condense/heat the air using refrigerator technology, then distribute the air to all rooms in an apartment. Heat pumps are highly efficient devices because they consume less electricity compared to other heating systems and can also be used in reverse (used in cooling the air in an apartment). They commonly exist in two categories, namely; air-source heat pumps and ground-source heat pumps (also known as geothermal heat pumps).

Air-source heat pumps are one of the most common types of heat pumps in most countries. Just as the name implies, it helps to keep the house warm by drawing air from outside the building, heating up the air by using thermal technology, then distributing the air to different parts of the house.

Ground-source heat pumps are a bit more complicated compared because they involve drilling a 6 to 8 feet long pipe to the ground—where concentrated heat is extracted from.

One major advantage of heat pumps is that they consume less energy (about ¼ of the energy of a traditional heating system). Although, it is important to note that they can be quite expensive to set up and might not work effectively in areas with relatively low temperatures.

 

5. Radiant Heating

Image credit: nordicghp.com

Radiant heating is an effective form of heating a house which basically involves the transfer of heat through infrared radiation from surfaces like walls, floors, and so on.

It is very effective because it doesn't require transferring heat through vents or delivering allergens. Instead, heat is transferred from tubes (containing hot water) or electrical cables buried in surfaces like walls, floors, among other places. However, the most popular forms of radiant heating are floor radiant heating and wall radiant heating.

 

6. Solar Hot Air

Image credit: ecorenovator.org

This is also known as a solar hot air collector. It operates by drawing air from different rooms into a “collector”, where it then heats the air and pumps it back to the rooms.

Fortunately, solar hot air collectors are fairly inexpensive and highly cost-efficient because they are powered freely by a major source of renewable energy — the sun. The major disadvantage of solar hot air is that it might not function effectively in cold periods due to the lack of constant sunshine since it is solar-powered.

 

7. Furnaces

A furnace is a popular method of heating an apartment, especially in the west. It features a duct system that helps to deliver hot air to each room in the house, thereby keeping the entire house warm.

If you ever plan to install a furnace in your home, there are different options to choose from; you can either choose the gas furnace, oil furnace, or electric furnace. The choice is yours to make!

Gas furnaces are very cost-efficient and are still wildly used in most homes. They run on natural gases or propane and feature a heat combustion chamber that produces hot combustion gases from which hot air is extracted and transferred to all rooms in the house.

Oil furnaces are a fairly common type. They have been around for decades and are still used in a lot of homes to date. Although some older models can be inefficient, newer models feature better designs and tend to work more effectively.

The electrical furnace is popular in countries where the cost of electrical energy is quite low. It is important to note that an electrical furnace requires a huge amount of energy and can easily increase your electric bill.

 

 8. Smart Programmable Thermostat

Image credit: howtogeek.com

If you’re tech-savvy or need something a little fancier, you can install a smart thermostat in your home. The device on its own is not very useful but can help to save money when used alongside modern heating systems.

Smart thermostats are devices that regularly take measurements of the internal temperature of a house and, based on the result of the measurements, execute certain actions. This action can be turning off the heating system when the internal temperature of the house gets too hot or turning on the heating system when the temperature drops too low.

Programmable smart thermostat features an interface where homeowners can set their desired temperature range and actions that will be executed at a specific temperature. Installing a smart thermostat alongside your heating system means that you will not need to worry about forgetting to switch off your heat system before leaving home.

 

Wrap Up

While there are different methods of heating a home, it is important to always do your research about the climate of your environment. Also, find out the cheapest form of reliable energy source available at your disposal before investing in any form of heating system. ‘

Doing this will not only allow you to make the right decision but also enable you to save a lot of money in the long run.

Hence, we hope that you now have enough information in determining the best cost-efficient ways of keeping your apartment warm and cozy like you ever wanted.