Home Heating Load: How to Manage Your Needs

If you don’t think you have any control over the cost of heating your home, think again. A savvy homeowner can take a number of steps to reduce the home heating load and thereby lower energy costs. In addition, reducing the heating load will allow you to save money on a smaller furnace or heat pump if and when you ever need to replace your current system.

What is a Home Heating Load?

To understand how this works, it’s important to define home heating load. This is a mathematical calculation of the exact amount of heat required to make a particular home comfortable. HVAC contractors should perform a heating load calculation before recommending a certain capacity central heating system. Factors that go into determining heating load include the home’s size and layout, level of insulation, airtightness, window coverage, orientation on the lot, and assorted other factors.

Sizing

Choosing the wrong capacity for a home’s heating system – whether over-sizing or under-sizing – will result in a variety of problems including energy waste, unbalanced, inefficient heating, and stress on equipment.

Reducing a Heating Load

Steps homeowners can take to reduce the heating load include sealing air leaks in the home’s outer perimeter, installing the right type and amount of insulation, and making sure ductwork is clean, well-sealed and properly designed, among other things.

While you can determine some of the needed improvements yourself, it’s best to commission a professional energy audit. Trained professionals, using high-tech diagnostic equipment, will ascertain where air is leaking from your home, where insulation is absent or insufficient, and whether ductwork is working as intended. Once you have the energy audit report, you can either proceed to take corrective action yourself (e.g., applying caulk, weatherstripping or spray foam to seal air leaks), or hire a professional to do part or all of the work.

Fortunately, most of the actions that will help reduce a home’s heating load also will lower its cooling load, reaping air conditioning savings while lowering the needed capacity of any future A/C you buy.

For more advice on reducing your Lorain area home’s heating load, please contact us at Energy 1 Heating & Air Conditioning.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Lorain, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about heating loads and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide or call us at 440-201-2959. 

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