Radiating Warmth From Within
Short Answer: The heater in your home generates heat when it’s turned on, allowing warm air to travel and circulate throughout your home.
Image 1: A person enjoys a warm home during the winter
Yes, heaters are wonderful in the winter. They keep our homes nice and warm when it’s frightfully cold outside. They also help keep the water pipes in our home warm like we previously discussed in Expanding Until it Pops. But how do heaters do it? How can they keep us warm when it’s so cold outside?
Image 2: A home standing firm in the cold winter air
Similar to how coffee cools in certain rooms like we discussed in The Morning Bean Juice Special, the same factors are at play here when discussing a heater heating your home: radiation, conduction and convection. Radiation occurs at the surface of the heating coils in your heater. Conduction occurs as the warm air is traveling through the cold air inside your home. Convection is the part of this process that circulates the warm air throughout your home.
Sounds easy enough, right? Well, not when it comes to manufacturing these units. Units made with heat pumps may rely on indoor coils that provide heat inside the house and outdoor coils that direct the cold air outside. Furnaces that can also be used to heat up homes may simply use natural gas as a heat source and radiate heat from there. While simple in principle, the actual scope of how all this works in these different heaters is a bit beyond what a Unifunful Today article can cover. Don’t worry, though: it’ll be something that can be covered in a future deep dive here on Unifunful!
Image 3: A log cabin nestled in the woods bracing the cold winter air
Furthermore, this can also affect how much your utility bills and maintenance costs will be during the winter time. Checking energy ratings and other information before you buy either a furnace or a central air conditioning unit with a heat pump is always a sound game plan.
Bottom Line: Make sure you do your research to find the best furnace or central air conditioning unit to stay safe and warm this winter.
Image 4: Family and friends enjoying a cozy home during a cold winter day
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