Traditional Gas Furnaces vs. Electric Heat Pumps - What Homeowners Need to Know

Furnaces have a higher BTU output than a comparable heat pump system because air heated by natural gas or propane tends to be warmer and heat up faster. However, with a shift towards more sustainable energy sources, it’s important for homeowners to know how to use these 100% electrical hvac systems.

Whether the heat pump you’re installing has a single-stage scroll compressor or an inverter driven compressor, homeowners can minimize the temperature setback by leaving the system running continuously and never turning it off completely. Because of the lower capacity of a heat pump, it’s important to maintain the thermal mass in a home. This refers to everything inside the home -- walls, floors, kitchen cabinets, furniture, bathroom fixtures and more.

The HVAC system not only has to heat up the air, but also heat up this thermal mass. If the entire home falls to 60 degrees, it takes a lot of BTU to get everything back to a comfortable temperature. Since a heat pump system should be sized to match the load on the house, it may take days to heat up since there won’t be much extra capacity on the coldest days of the year. Plus, with an inverter driven compressor, it’s less expensive to operate the system continuously. It’s best to set it, forget it and let the system maintain the temperature.