hot water boiler v. gas furnace

Steamhead

is that when the fan in a fur-nasty starts, the resulting air movement makes you feel cooler. Hot-water heat doesn't move the air nearly as much, so you can keep the thermostat lower and still be comfortable.

Keep your hot-water system. The over-all efficiency is much, much better.

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Courtney Calhoun

hot water boiler v. gas furnace

I have the choice of replacing my heating system with a hot water boiler system or converting to a gas furnace. I have a simple question which system, hot water boiler system or gas furnace will be the cheapest heat source to run in reference to my utility bills. I have considered a number of pros and cons unrelated to cost. THX

John@Reliable_4

Courtney, it would be ..............

A lot of reasons, but to keep it simple the hot water boiler would be. And if it happens to be oil fired boiler it would even be less to operate. Hope this helps John@Reliable

Joe_13

Adding ductwork for AC?

And the offer to add a furnace came up I guess? Stay with the best heat system there is: hydronic. Remember that you must power that blower and the heat loss through ductwork.
Don't be fooled by the running efficency numbers of furnaces. Those numbers only represent energy conversion at the furnace source, not of how much actually gets out to the registers.

Boilerpro_3

Take a look at the rest of the world....

Where ever fuel costs are high or winters long, hot water, or steam, heating tends to dominate the market. If you are looking at having central cooling added to your home, and you have a current hot water system, keep the systems separate. Any contractor or engineer worth thier salt will tell you that a single ductwork system cannot work equally efficient and balanced as two separate systems. When dealing with ducted systems, you are dealing with air. Hot air, not heat, rises, and cold air falls, so where should the vents be located? A combo forced air heat/cool system is always going to be a great compromise in terms of comfort and efficiency. Besides, you can expect almost any properly installed boiler today to give you 30 years of service or more, while the life espectancy of the best typical forced air furnace is 14 years, with many of the cheaper models apparantly lasting less than 10 years.

I am currently adding central cooling to my personal home and what I plan to do is simply have some heating available from the air handler should my hot water heat system konk out midwinter. You could use a standard furnace, or just add some electric heat cools for back up.

Boilerpro