During the winter season, a heating system is necessary to ensure that homes and businesses don’t subject their occupants to frigid temperatures. Heating systems exist in many different types and models, each of them suitable for different buildings and situations.
Hence the team at Service Plus Heating and Cooling would like to inform you of the different types of heating systems available in Ottawa.
Central Heating System
A central heating system uses one main heating source to provide warmth to a number of rooms in a building. It is a part of HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems, capable of heating and cooling rooms. 
There are various types of central heating systems.
Furnaces
A central furnace is the most common type of heating system in Ottawa and other North American households. It creates warmth in internal spaces by using registers or grills and ducts to deliver warm air through the building. Furnaces are powered by natural gas, fuel oil, or electricity.
Boilers
Boilers are specially designed water heaters that use steam to distribute heat through a building. Boilers use radiators and other similar devices to ensure that only heat is transmitted, not water. The cool water travels from the radiator back to the boiler to be reheated. Systems like these are often referred to as hydronic systems. Boilers are usually powered by heating oil or natural gas.
Heat Pumps
Heat pumps are basically air conditioners with extra functionality. In warmer weather, an air conditioner cools interior spaces by extracting heat from inside the building and transmitting it outside. A heat pump works by inverting this process, finding heat from outside the building with an electrical system and bringing it inside. Most heat pumps work with forced warm-air delivery. Air-source heat pumps generate heat from the outside air while ground-source heat pumps generate heat from underground.
Direct Heating System
A direct heating system generates heat in three main ways; by an electric current through a material, by creating exothermic reactions in controlled environments, or by agitating a material’s atoms and/or molecules by EM (Electromagnetic) radiation.
These methods can be seen in space heaters that are used to heat a single room.
Gas-Fired Space Heater
This kind of heater can be found in wall mounts, floor furnaces or as a free-standing device. Their lack of ducts makes it difficult to heat more than one room at a time without the need for opening doors connected to the other rooms. More advanced models come with installed pipes to remove smoke and other combustion products from the interior space. Gas-fired heaters are usually powered by natural gas, propane, or kerosene.
Electric Space Heaters
Electric heaters are mostly inexpensive but become costly when used extensively. With oil-filled and quartz-infrared heaters, they turn the electric current into heat similar to household irons and toaster ovens. The amount of power required to sustain heat in a room makes them more suitable for intermittent use. While they are mostly available as portable appliances, electric baseboard heaters are also available as a hard-wired option. They can be controlled with room thermostats.
Wood and Pellet Stoves
Wood and pellet stoves are more common in rural areas. Wood prices are significantly lower than those of gas, electricity and oil, so savings with these can be large. However, wood burning does create a worrisome pollution issue. As such, there is legislation that regulates the emissions of wood stoves. Newer models burn much cleaner as a result. Pellet stoves offer some critical advantages over wood stoves. They produce less polluting emissions and allow for greater control of the temperature.
Service Plus Heating & Cooling – HVAC Experts
There are many heating systems available for your specific needs. The winter season does not have to be uncomfortably cold if you can make use of an effective heating system.
Please contact us if you need a heating system installed for the colder time of year. Service Plus Heating & Cooling offers the best HVAC services you can find in Ottawa and the surrounding areas. Our team of experienced technicians is on hand to help you find and install the heating system to serve your needs this season and in the future.
