Water systems are very common in residential buildings; they can be powered by both boilers and hydronic heat pumps and, thanks to their versatility, they allow the terminals to be chosen from a wide variety of solutions. The pipes are much less bulky than the ducts used in air systems and this guarantees more flexibility and simplicity of installation electrical repairs in Birmingham, AL.

Air systems are the least common in homes and residential buildings; they are mainly used in large buildings as centralized systems, given the considerable bulk of the channels that carry hot air. Air systems often require connection to the AHU (Air Handling Unit) and instead have a burner as a heat generator.

Direct expansion systems are easy to install : the pipes through which the refrigerant gas flows are very small. In this case, the heat generator will always be a heat pump, which makes it possible to produce both hot and cold in most cases. For this reason, we talked about direct expansion systems also with regard to the types of air conditioning systems .

THE TERMINALS

Finally, heating systems differ in the type of terminals to which they are connected . The most common examples of terminals, especially for residential buildings, are the following:

Fan coil or fan coil systems

Radiator systems (cast iron, steel, aluminum)

Radiant panel systems (floor, wall, skirting board, ceiling)

Systems with direct expansion machines (wall, floor, cassette, ducted)

Fan coil systems, or steel or aluminum radiators are medium temperature systems and can therefore be powered by both heat pumps and boilers.

Cast iron radiator systems , on the other hand, are high temperature systems and must therefore be powered by boilers (only very few heat pumps on the market are able to reach temperatures such as to be associated with cast iron radiators).

Radiant panel systems (floor, wall, baseboard, ceiling) are instead low temperature systems, and can therefore be associated with heat pumps. In terms of savings and energy efficiency , the association between radiant panels and solar energy generator would be ideal . The design and installation of such a system could certainly be more expensive as regards the initial investment, but it would have an excellent performance in terms of heating and energy savings in the long term