One of my biggest beefs with the residential building industry is the lack of care so many heating contractors/suppliers have for providing accurate sizing of the heating system to their customers.
Now that’s a generalization. Not every contractor or supplier is like that, but the ones that do care enough to size the system properly are few and far between.
It’s sort of understandable why – very few have ever been trained on how to do it properly. That, and it takes a fair amount of time to do. It requires a careful analysis and calculation of the spaces to be heated. It’s detail work. And it’s math related. And it takes time. And the customer doesn’t ask for it.
So why should he?
Why a heat loss calculation is important
It’s a matter of economy and efficiency.
Let’s take economy first. If the heating system doesn’t closely match the heat loss of the rooms, you have two potential outcomes. Either you have too much heat installed – which means you’ve bought (and had to finance, most likely) more than you need or you have too little heat installed – which means you’re going to be uncomfortable for at least part of the heating season. Neither outcome is acceptable in my mind.
On the efficiency front, closely matching the heating system to the actual demand of the rooms results in better energy efficiency. A more familiar analogy might be an automobile. Cars often come in 4 cylinder, 6 cylinder and maybe 8 cylinder options. The 8 cylinder is going to (generally speaking) have more horsepower and therefore will have enough power for you to drive around, pass other cars quickly when you want or need to. It has enough excess capacity to pull a trailer or otherwise perform “extra duty” work. However it consumes more gas all the time in doing so. Now if you need that kind of power frequently, then the 8 cylinder motor might be your best compromise on the price/performance scale. However, if you rarely, if ever, have the need for the extra power, every mile you drive is going to cost you more than it really should.
A 4 cylinder engine won’t likely have the power to haul a heavy trailer but it is going to be more fuel efficient all the time.
If you won’t ever (or very rarely) haul a trailer or otherwise have “extra duty” demand then the additional cost of the 8 cylinder engine and the extra gas consumption is not an economical or efficient choice.
Your heating system is no different. If you match the heating system’s capacity to the home’s demand you’ll have an economically sized and efficiently heated home.
For the record, we provide a free heat loss calculation estimate to all our clients as a general business practice. We’ve been doing that since Day 1 simply because it’s that important.
Note: In subsequent posts I’ll delve into some of the more important elements of the heat loss calculations so that you’ll better understand why it is critical to your comfort, your pocket book and your peace of mind.
[...] the first post of this series, I hope I’ve convinced you that sizing [...]