What’s The Most Efficient Heating System For Your Home?

Not that we need to remind you, but heating a home is expensive. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, heating costs are responsible for around 30% of the typical home utility bill—more than any other “system” in the home.

While there are many ways to cut these costs (like using a programmable thermostat or simply wearing a sweater in lieu of cranking up the heat), one very practical step you can take is to outfit your home with an efficient heating system. Even if it requires an upfront investment, you’ll save money over time because the more efficient a heating system is, the less energy it needs to operate, and this can translate into lower heating bills.

What Makes a Heating System Efficient?

It helps, of course, to know what defines “efficient” so that when you go in search of one—or when you are trying to determine whether your existing system is efficient—you’ll know what to look for.

A heat pump’s effectiveness is directly affected by weather conditions. In moderate climates, heat pumps are far more efficient than a furnace. In very cold climates the furnace is more efficient (although heat pumps are becoming contenders quickly).

In general, the most important piece of information is the system’s annual fuel utilization efficiency rating, or AFUE for short. This measurement, which is a percentage rate, tells you how much of the energy (usually, in the form of electricity or natural gas) that the system consumes is going directly toward heating your home versus how much is going to waste. In other words, it lets you know how much energy the system is converting into usable heat.

An AFUE of 90%, for example, indicates a high rate of efficiency—a system with this rating is putting all but 10% of its energy to good use. Currently, the DOE requires a minimum AFUE of 80%, but a lot of modern heating systems exceed the minimum (some rate as high as 98.5%).

The least efficient system? Basically, anything manufactured before 1992, before there were any AFUE standards. This means that if you live in a 30-plus year-old home and haven’t upgraded the heating system since then (or ever), you are probably wasting a lot of energy and money.

How much energy? That depends on so many individual factors, but to give you an idea of the difference between old furnaces and newer ones, the DOE reports that “upgrading your furnace or boiler from 56% to 90% efficiency in an average cold-climate house will save 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year if you heat with natural gas.”

That’s a lot of CO2.

It can also reduce your heating bill by as much as 50%, says the DOE.