Tired of Lugging Firewood or Pellets?

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A wood stove can be charming feature in your home.  It makes you think about cold days, drinking cocoa with the kids, and maybe a big dog nearby on the floor.  But wood stoves, whether it’s a pellet stove or hardwood, have downsides as well.

Wood stoves require feeding with fuel.  Pellet stoves tend to use 2 bags of pellets a day during cold weather, and come in 40 lb bags.  This means lugging 80 pounds of pellets a day to keep your home heated and comfortable, let alone the storage required to make sure you have enough pellets around for a week.  Online discussion boards report that the typical home owner might use 3-4 tons of pellets over the course of a winter!

Dried traditional firewood has its own issues as well.  You need to use properly seasoned wood, and after the severe winter last year, the Boston Globe reports scarcity has driven prices up to $325 a cord.  Add on a typical home using 4 cords for a winter, and you’re spending more money to heat your home than you may have been expecting.  Storage is an issue, and anyone who has had a wood pile knows it also attracts bugs, spiders, and the occasional rodent.

If you are thinking about alternatives that will keep you from lugging pellets or firewood around all winter, Mitsubishi has a new Hyper Heat system that will deliver increased comfort to your home, add cooling in the summer, and now has attractive rebates from the Mass Clean Energy Center program as well.

Mitsubishi Hyper Heat offers a Simple, Pain-Free Option for Heating and Cooling

Hyper Heat is a new heat pump technology that works efficiently in temperatures down to -13 F. Hyper Heat runs off of electricity, and works by taking the cold air outside, extracting the heat, and then pumps that heat into your home.  Its sensors enable you to maintain a steady temperature as well, rather than having hot or cold spots throughout a room, offering a big advantage over traditional wood or pellet stoves. While there are electricity costs involved, there is no additional fuel costs associated with system or expensive maintenance, other than an occasional check for efficiency and health of the system overall.  The best benefit is that Hyper Heat is also a ductless cooling system, so it air conditions your home as well, a big benefit, especially with our increasingly warm and humid summers in the Boston area.

Frequently Asked Questions: Can a Wood Stove or Hyper Heat heat my whole home?

Of course, the answer to this question depends on the size of your home.  Not all stove heating systems are designed to heat an entire home, and you need to make sure any stove is appropriate for the use intended.  Likewise, Hyper Heat heat pump systems come in different sizes and can be adjusted to heat a room, or a home of any size, with or without a duct system.

What About Esthetics? What does it look like?

Wood stoves often add a quaint touch to homes, but they also get incredibly hot, causing a potential for injury and burns, especially with young children.  They take up a fair amount of room, and require chimneys and reasonable air-flow to make them work properly.  Modern homes are often well-insulated meaning they have less natural air flow, which would require adding additional air flow equipment, such as a fan, to keep air circulating.  This sort of thing adds additional operation costs you might not remember to consider when thinking about operation costs.

By contrast, ductless Hyper Heat systems are wall mounted units that can be placed to be unobtrusive.  Mounted high on a wall, they do not interfere with traffic flow, or cause any concern for children or pets who might bump into a stove or space heater and accidentally injure themselves. In addition by being placed out of the way, Hyper Heat won’t interfere with the placement of furniture or traffic flow in your home, unlike the bulky needs of a wood stove and its associated parts.

Hyper Heat also does not require any separate air flow.  The inside unit is connected to a compressor located outdoors, ensuring there’s no need to open windows or add fans to keep the heat flowing.  There’s no extra equipment required, and it can help ensure that no additional particulate matter, like soot, circulates in your home, providing a real benefit to anyone with allergies or breathing problems. 

Will the system keep us comfortable?

Traditionally, wood stoves are placed in areas where a family spends the most time, but distributing that heat to a whole house becomes a challenge.  Wood stoves tend to be like space heaters, and work best to heat a specific area or zone, rather than a whole home.  In addition, it’s hard to get just a little heat from a wood stove; it’s very easy to be too hot or too cold, and it’s difficult to get that comfort sweet spot, especially when it’s just chilly outside, versus temperatures below freezing.

By contrast, Hyper Heat is designed to regulate heat at the touch of a button.  You can adjust the temperature to suit, and it adjusts quickly and easily, making sure your home is always the right temperature to keep everyone happy.  Because Hyper-Heat systems can be placed in different areas of the home, it can also be used to create zones, allowing some areas to be warmer than others, depending on the preferences of family members.  Often Hyper Heat systems are installed to make spaces like bonus rooms or three season rooms functional throughout the year, and provide additional comfort, especially for family members that may be sensitive to heat or cold.

In fact, one of the best features of a Hyper Heat heat pump system is that it also provides cooling air conditioning in the summer as well as heat in the winter.  While Hyper Heat is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to heat your home, its operation costs are similar to traditional air conditioning in warmer months.  However, the fact that it can act as a heating AND cooling system means that it will work to ensure your family’s comfort 365 days a year, rather than just part of the year, making it a true value add to your home.

Summary

If you’re getting tired of always having to feed your wood stove, you will want to consider whether a Hyper Heat system will save you the pain of lugging pellets or firewood around, as well as maintenance costs in trying to keep a chimney clean. Hyper-Heat also offers a true year round comfort solution for your home, something a wood stove just can’t offer.  It’s more efficient and requires less maintenance than a wood stove, and it takes up much less room, allowing you to maximize your living space.

While a Hyper Heat system will most likely be more expensive in up-front costs, the ease of operation, lower maintenance and increased efficiency in day to day operation will save you work and worry compared to a wood stove.  This will be extremely beneficial for most homeowners, and coupled with its use as a cooling system, Hyper Heat can be a great solution to make sure your home is comfortable 365 days a year. 

If you already have wood stove heating, you can easily add in Hyper Heat to compensate for the rooms that may not be getting the proper temperatures as well.  Contact one of our experts today to discuss the best option for your home, and how you can save money and increase comfort today.

Heating with Ductless HVAC

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