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If your furnace needs replacement, now’s a good time to learn about recent advancements in home heating technology. Modulating furnaces are an option worth considering if you’d like to improve your home comfort and energy efficiency.

Gas furnaces are an efficient and reliable method of home heating and a popular choice with Michigan homeowners. Just like other types of fuel-burning equipment, a furnace produces potentially-dangerous combustion fumes that need to be vented for safety.

The heating load of your home refers to how much your home’s heating system has to run to keep it comfortable. The size of your home affects it directly, but other, smaller attributes of your home impact the load as well. The amount of insulation, all its air leaks large and small, and the heat lost through the windows contribute too.

Forced-air furnaces are workhorse heating systems that can provide years of reliable service when they’re well maintained. However, all furnaces are bound to go on the fritz sooner or later. Many problems may be resolved without calling your HVAC technician. Try the following furnace troubleshooting tips out to see if you can get your heat back on.

In climates with long, cold winters, radiant heating is generally regarded as the most comfortable, although forced-air heating systems still dominate, even in Michigan. Radiant heat mimics the sun. It heats objects instead of the air, and by doing so, creates even, long-lasting heat.

Once winter weather arrives, outdoor humidity levels drop because cold air doesn’t hold moisture like warm air does. Running the furnace pulls more moisture out of your air supply and can make the indoor humidity fall to desert-like levels. Investing in a humidifier is the best way to replace depleted moisture and raise the humidity level back to an optimal 45–55 percent range.

Facing a furnace motor replacement may not seem like it would make much difference in home comfort, but if you upgrade it with an ECM (electronically commutated motor), you’ll have plenty of reasons to be glad you did. Most furnaces and air conditioners use PSC (permanent split capacitor) motors for the blower, and while they’re durable, they’re limited in other ways.

Of all the decisions you make as a homeowner, few impact your comfort and budget as much as home heating systems. The two most common types include forced-air furnaces and heat pumps, along with radiant heating systems. Both provide comfortable and dependable home heating, but one may be better than the other based on the layout of your home or family health circumstances.

If you’re investigating radiant heating, you may have heard that it’s only possible to have it installed in warmer weather. That was the case when the heating mechanism had to be set into a freshly-poured concrete slab that had to cure.

With temperatures in the area cooling down, there’s no better time to start thinking about how to heat your Grand Traverse County home this winter. If you’re looking for something different from the typical forced-air furnace, consider having radiant flooring installed.