Heating your home is essential for your overall comfort. If you’re too cold, it’s impossible to relax. There’re significant differences between heating using natural gas and electricity to supply power to your heating equipment.
In this article, we explore the pros and cons with both natural gas and electrical heating.
Natural Gas – Pros
Natural gas provides a reliable heat source. Depending on the supplier, natural gas is sometimes cheaper to operate. This does depend on how much is used and in what way.
A natural gas heating system can work cooperatively with a separate AC unit or two around the house. With the installation of a heat pump, both warmer and cooler air can be distributed in the home without much complication.
Natural Gas – Cons
A line with natural gas to the house is required to make use of gas as a supply source. Homes that don’t currently have gas lines setup will find the cost to install them to be surprisingly high. However, it is possible to work around this, by using bottled gas, for example.
Natural gas is inherently dangerous in the wrong hands. A simple accidental gas leak with the homeowner returning and lighting up a cigarette can lead to catastrophic results. A carbon monoxide detector is necessary to sound an alarm to alert about a gas leak, hopefully averting the worst.
Gas-based heating systems tend to last only 10 or so years. If you want to know how much gas you consume in your building, read this post from plumbing engineers.
Electrical – Pros
Electricity supply is likely already wired in, and if it isn’t, it’ll need to be to get lights and power. Therefore, electrical-based heating is easier to get started on and without a potentially expensive extra installation fee from the utility.
There is little chance of getting electrocuted when using an electrical heating system. It also isn’t likely to cause other injuries either. Consequently, there’s no need to pay extra for a carbon monoxide detector.
Electrical-based heating systems tend to last 20+ years. They do require maintenance every so often.
Electrical – Cons
It might be a little more expensive to heat a home if more electricity is used compared to a gas supply. Also, it’s difficult to separate the cost of heating from the expense of other power users in the rest of the home.
For people who are used to using gas, they may find an electrical heating system a little difficult to handle. There’s no pilot light to check out. They may feel a bit out of their element. Furthermore, an electrical heater may take longer to warm up compared to a gas-based one.
It’s certainly fair to say that using gas to power a heating system is more complicated than with electrical systems. Gas is inherently risky, and it needs trained personnel experienced with working on a gas-based system to do so safely. But it can be cheaper, and some people are more familiar with gas usage and feel more comfortable with it.