Heat Emitter Library

Heat Emitter Library

Get to know more about your heating system and your options.

As we discussed in “What are the Different Types of Home Heating Systems?” there are two categories of heating appliances—whole house, and single room.  On the top half of this page we have pictured the different kinds of emitters that you will find around your home if you have a whole-house central heating furnace or boiler.  The bottom half of the page illustrates all the types of single-room heaters.

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CENTRAL HEATING SYSTEM HEAT EMITTERS

Hydronic Baseboard

Hydronic Baseboard

Hydronic means hot water.  These traditional fin style baseboard units are very common and very effective.  They use high-temperature water ...
Radiant Floors

Radiant Floors

Radiant floors use hot water from the boiler to heat a coil hidden below the finished floor.  This heat emitter ...
Steam Radiators

Steam Radiators

Cast Iron steam radiators became popular in the late 19th century and were often fired in coal, then oil, and ...
Forced Hot Air Floor Register

Centrally Ducted Forced Air 

Centrally ducted forced air systems could be used for heating, cooling, or both. These systems have two parts: a) the ...
Fan-convector

Fan Convectors

Each of these fan convector heat emitters receives hot water from the central-heating boiler. First, the water passes through a ...
Panel radiator

Panel Radiators

Panel radiators can work on traditional, high-temperature water generated by an oil, gas, or wood pellet boiler. They also work ...
hydro bed

New & Innovative

All  these heat emitters are designed to be tied into a central heating boiler. Images courtesy of Myson ...


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SINGLE ROOM HEAT EMITTERS

Mini-Split Heat Pumps

Mini-Split Heat Pumps

Ductless Mini-Split, Cold Climate Heat Pumps (CCHPs) are single room heaters. A conduit, which houses the power cable, refrigerant tubing, suction ...
Wall-vented gas heater

Direct-Vent Gas Heaters

Direct-vent gas heaters have the advantage of combusting the fuel right in the room where heat is needed, instead of ...
Electric Baseboard Heater

Electric Baseboard

Even though electric baseboard heaters work on resistance heat which does not have the leveraging effect of a heat pump, ...
woodstove

Wood Stove

A wood stove works great in a home with an open floor plan. In addition to the ambience and comfort ...
Wood Pellet Stove

Wood Pellet Stove

A wood pellet stove has a few advantages over traditional wood stoves: A wood pellet stove doesn't need to be ...
Fireplace Inserts

Fireplace Inserts

A fire in your fireplace gives the room a comforting glow and does warm a small area. The EPA estimates ...
Fireplace

Fireplace

The warmth of an open fire resonates deeply in our species, but 90% of the fire heat goes up the ...
ceiling mounted electric heater

Miscellaneous Electric Heaters

There are a variety of electric resistance heat emitters on the market. Wall and ceiling mounted units are typically found ...

Heat Loss

The two variables of of heat loss are a) geographic location, and b) building performance. Together they will determine the quantity of heat needed to maintain comfort.

Geographic location drives the building's “design day." Your design day is the difference in temperature between the inside and outside of your house on the theoretical coldest day of the year; so in the northeast we calculate a day that is -10ºf outside and comfortable 68ºf inside. This is referred to as the “delta-T” value. A typical delta-T for the northeast is 78º.

Building performance is the big one because there’s nothing we can do about geographic location. Today we can build a really tight thermal envelope, but most of our heating pollution comes from the millions of homes built over the last 100-150 years. We are getting better at buttoning-up those old buildings with insulation and weather sealing but weatherization is still  never going to be enough to overcome the heat loss from a 78º delta-T. That means we need heating systems that can quickly put a whole lot of heat back into those old houses on the days that are really cold.