Heating Installation in Smithville, ON — Choosing the Right System for Your House

In Smithville, a heating installation starts with a choice about what kind of system goes in, not just which model. A house that needs a new one can take a gas furnace, a heat pump, the two working together, or a boiler feeding radiators. The house itself rules some of those out before anyone quotes you, and it does that on two grounds: what fuel reaches the property, and what carries the heat once it has been made. The company has been family-owned since 2014, and our technicians hold TSSA certification. This page covers the decision that comes before the installation.

Which Heating System Should You Install in a Smithville House?

It depends on three things about your house rather than on which system is best in general. They are the fuel that reaches the property, whatever carries the heat around once it has been made, and how much cold it has to cope with. Those three answers usually narrow four options down to one or two.

• On the gas main: a gas furnace, a heat pump, or both together.
• Not on the gas main: propane, oil, or a heat pump with electric backup.
• Radiators and no ducts: a boiler, or an air-to-water heat pump.

Enbridge starts the same way, with a form asking whether gas reaches your street at all. (1)

What Your House Already Has Narrows the Choice

Before anyone talks about equipment, three things about the building decide what is possible.

Is the gas main on your street? Plenty of people assume it is there. Enbridge’s own process begins with a form you fill in “to inquire if there is natural gas on your street or if you are interested in having natural gas extended to your area”. They then confirm whether extending the service is feasible, and they are direct about what can follow: “a customer contribution may be required to extend gas service”, sometimes as an expansion surcharge instead. (1) Enbridge also says your heating contractor applies for the new gas service on your behalf, so that part is not paperwork you chase yourself.

Does the heat reach the rooms through ducts, or through pipes? Ducts and vents make a gas furnace or a ducted heat pump possible. Radiators, or pipes buried in the floor, point somewhere else: a boiler, or an air-to-water heat pump, which Natural Resources Canada describes as less common in Canada. (2) If that is your house, what changes if your heat comes from pipes, not vents is a separate page.

Can the ductwork carry what a heat pump moves? Almost nobody asks this one, and it explains the two things people complain about after a heat pump goes in.

A furnace and a heat pump treat air differently. NRCan puts it plainly. A heat pump supplies “a greater volume of airflow at lower temperature compared to furnace systems”, heating that air to roughly 25 to 45 degrees Celsius. A furnace moves less air and heats it to between 55 and 60. (2)

Two things follow from that. The air out of the vents is cooler than a furnace owner is used to, and NRCan says you may notice it when the new system starts running. And the ducts have more air to carry: “If the heat pump airflow exceeds the capacity of your existing ducting, you may have noise issues or increased fan energy use.” (2) In an older Smithville or Grimsby house still on its original ductwork, that is worth checking before the equipment is ordered rather than afterwards.

None of this rules a heat pump out. It decides whether the job is an equipment swap, or an equipment swap plus ductwork, and those are two different jobs with two different quotes.

A Gas Furnace, a Heat Pump, or Both

Three ways to heat a Smithville house that already has gas, and the third one is the one nobody local writes about.

A gas furnace on its own. It burns fuel and makes hot air, and the outdoor temperature does not change what it can produce. If your house already has one and another is going in, the 95 percent rule and the chimney it rules out covers what has changed since the last one was fitted.

A heat pump on its own. It moves heat instead of making it, and the same equipment cools the house in summer. NRCan is straightforward about the limit: “Most air-source installations require a supplementary heating source to maintain indoor temperatures during the coldest days.” (2) So a heat pump on its own is really a heat pump plus something else for the worst week of the year. Adding an outdoor unit to a house that has never had one is its own page.

Both, working together. NRCan calls this a hybrid system: “the combination of a natural gas furnace with an electric air source heat pump”. Its controls “automatically send a signal to the system to switch to the furnace or the heat pump, depending on the least expensive mode of operation at the time”. (3) The heat pump handles the mild months, the furnace takes the cold snaps, and the switching control decides which one runs.

NRCan researchers tracked a hybrid with those controls across a full heating season and measured a 30 percent drop in greenhouse gas emissions against running the gas furnace alone. (3) That research was published in 2019 and NRCan still carries it.

It suits this province for a reason NRCan states directly: Ontario is an area of low-cost natural gas and higher-cost electricity, which is the exact situation a switching control is built for.

The Heating Equipment We Install

We are a Rheem Pro Partner. That designation comes from Rheem, and a contractor cannot simply buy it. Rheem also owns Weatherking, its lower-cost line, so a tighter budget still keeps you inside a brand we are trained on and can source parts for.

Which of the two goes in follows the system you settled on above and the space it has to sit in. The brand is the last decision in a heating installation, not the first.

What Affects Heating Installation Cost in Smithville

A heating installation has two costs, and most people compare only the first one.

The first is what you pay to put it in. Four things move it:

• whether the fuel already reaches the house
• whether the ductwork carries the new airflow, or has to be altered
• whether anything has to come out before the new system goes in
• whether the appliance can reach the vent, the drain and the fuel line where it stands

The second is what you pay to run it, and nobody can quote you that one, including us.

Natural gas prices in Ontario are not set by your contractor, and not by the utility on its own either. The Ontario Energy Board sets them, and says so plainly: “We set rates for the natural gas that you use (supply) 4 times a year.” (4) They move because gas is bought on an open market. The OEB describes it as “a commodity that is traded on North American markets”, where “market prices rise and fall based on current supply and demand”. It also notes that gas “is usually more expensive in the winter months”. Utilities “must pass through to you the price they pay to buy natural gas on the open market, with no markup.” (4)

So choosing between gas and electricity is a bet on two prices you do not set, and the regulator re-sets one of them every three months. A running-cost figure someone gives you today describes this winter and does not promise the next one. Ask what a system costs to run at today’s rates, and treat anything past that as an estimate.

Heating Installation Questions From Smithville Homeowners

What is the best heating system for a house in Canada? There is no single best one, and any page that names one is guessing about your house. The fuel that reaches the property and the way heat travels around inside it settle most of the answer before efficiency ratings come into it at all.

Why is my bill so high with a heat pump? Because electricity and gas sit on separate markets and their prices move independently. Shifting your heating onto electricity moves your bill onto the electricity market. A heat pump worked hard through a cold snap also leans on its backup heat, and that is the expensive part of the winter.

What is the major disadvantage of a heat pump? The air from the vents is cooler than a furnace owner expects, and the ducts have more of it to carry. Both are manageable, and both are easier to plan for before the work starts than to discover in February.

How long does it take to install a new heating system? That depends on what is changing. Swapping one appliance for the same kind is a different job from bringing a fuel to a house that has never had it, or from altering ductwork. A new gas service also runs on the utility’s timetable rather than ours.

Is it worth replacing a furnace that still works? Sometimes, and what usually decides it is the age of the unit against what it costs to run each winter, not whether it has broken. Our furnaces page works through when it stops being worth spending money on using Hydro One’s own guidance.

Book a Heating Installation Quote in Smithville

Have three answers ready when you call the office: what heats the house now, whether the heat arrives through vents or radiators, and whether there is gas on your street. Those three answers decide most of what we would recommend.

If you want the wider view first, all the ways a home here gets heated sets out each option in one place.

References

1. Enbridge Gas, Connect to Gas, enbridgegas.com
2. Natural Resources Canada, Heating and cooling with a heat pump, natural-resources.canada.ca
3. Natural Resources Canada, The future of home heating: Hybrid home heating systems offer energy savings and reduce GHG emissions, natural-resources.canada.ca
4. Ontario Energy Board, Natural gas rates, oeb.ca