ELECTRIC FURNACES? GAS FURNACES? WHICH ONE IS BETTER FOR MY HOUSE?

Winter Is Upon The McKinney, TX Area.

Now that the weather has turned colder and winter is on the horizon, we are looking forward to huddling around the fireplace and turning on our furnaces at home. Most of the weather in McKinney is Pleasant in the winter time but the past 2 years have been very rough weather for the winter. It is always a good idea in the fall to make sure your furnace is operational and safe for The Long Winter ahead. Read ahead to find out all you need to know about the differences between gas and electric furnaces. Usually if your furnace is going bad and you need to replace it you are not going to switch from gas to electric or vice versa. Alternatively if you are adding square footage to your home or building a new one you would consider the difference between an electric furnace and a gas furnace. This post will include information about both furnace types to better inform you.

 

First up we'll go over cost. The cost of electric furnaces usually is much less for initial installation and cost of the equipment. On the other hand gas furnaces tend to Cost Less to run. Like I mentioned before if your home is already set up with a gas furnace or an electric furnace this may not affect you much main cost we are talking about are utilities that must be installed in a new construction application. In other words from scratch the gas furnace cost more then the electric furnace to get installed and set up in a new construction situation. Your home may already be set up like I said for one or the other furnace type and this is going to be the most affordable route when replacing existing air conditioning and heating equipment. With that said electric furnaces can be coupled with heat pump units to rival the efficiency of heating your home. It is still more efficient to use a gas furnace but nowhere near the cost of electric heat only. Electric heat strips operate at almost three times the amount of electricity needed to run your heat pump. A heat pump air conditioning unit can run air conditioning mode to cool your house in the summer and reverse to run heat mode to heat your house in the winter. This has nothing to do with your electric furnace or gas furnace this is strictly a function of the outdoor air conditioning unit.

 

Another consideration might be the potential life you would get out of each unit type. With regular maintenance gas furnaces May last up to 20 years or more. Parts may need to be changed but all in all gas furnaces are fairly sturdy pieces of equipment. Electric furnaces May last longer being that they are mostly made up of an electric heat strip and a fan motor. With that said most electric furnaces are now coupled with the air conditioning coil for inside or the evaporator coil in other words. This combination is called an electric air handler this is considerably more expensive and is usually the first component of your system to wear out from corrosion or normal use. This will change the life expectancy of the unit considerably. In this case the air handler is most certainly the weakest link in your air conditioning and heating system mainly due to the fact that when summer comes around if you're evaporator coil is not functioning you will not have air conditioning in your home.

 

Some homeowners like to feel safe knowing that their furnace does not make carbon monoxide, thus keeping the potential for a leak into their home nonexistent. This level of comfort can be found with an electric furnace. Not all homeowners are worried about this but it is another potential down side of a gas furnace. The spent exhaust gas must exit the home with certain regulations adhered to in order to keep all occupants safe. With the fuel source being an electric heat kit you would not have this problem because the electric furnace does not make carbon monoxide as a by product of using fuel.

Check with your Builder or local air conditioning and heating company to determine whether or not you should be using a gas furnace or electric furnace in your home. Take into account the possibility that with solar panels and electric heater system May cost more in theory but you are not paying as much for electricity as others. Other considerations like potential Savings of utilities that need to be upgraded or changed in order to switch from one furnace type to the other. These different options or problems would have to be weighed on an individual basis depending on your short-term and long-term goals on the project.