HEATING !!

HOW DO YOU USE HEAT ENERGY AT HOME ?

We use natural gas from a main supply, feeding a central heating boiler. This supplies hot water and water filled radiators throughout the house. The boiler is rated at 80,000 BTU/hour. We also have a gas supplied fireplace with artificial coals in the main sitting room, for the evenings in the winter
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF HEATING SYSTEMS
Acid Rain 
Increase in Greenhouse gases 
Ocean Acidification 
Earth Temperature Rise 
Surface Water Temperatures 
History of Heating!!

Some buildings in the Roman Empire used central heating systems, conducting air heated by furnaces through empty spaces under the floors and out of pipes in the walls—a system known as a hypocaust.

In the early medieval Alpine upland, a simpler central heating system where heat travelled through underfloor channels from the furnace room replaced the Roman hypocaust at some places. In Reichenau Abbey a network of interconnected underfloor channels heated the 300 m² large assembly room of the monks during the winter months. The degree of efficiency of the system has been calculated at 90%.

In the 13th century, the Cistercian monks revived central heating in Christian Europe using river diversions combined with indoor wood-fired furnaces. The well-preserved Royal Monastery of Our Lady of the Wheel (founded 1202) on the Ebro River in the Aragon region of Spain provides an excellent example of such an application.

The Roman hypocaust continued to be used on a smaller scale during late Antiquity and by the Umayyad caliphate, while later Muslim builder employed a simpler system of underfloor pipes.

By about 1700 Russian engineers had started designing hydrologically based systems for central heating. The Summer Palace (1710–1714) of Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg provides the best extant example. Slightly later, in 1716, came the first use of water in Sweden to distribute heat in buildings. Martin Triewald, a Swedish engineer, used this method for a greenhouse at Newcastle upon Tyne. Jean Simon Bonnemain (1743–1830), a French architect, introduced the technique to industry on a cooperative, at Château du Pêcq, near Paris.

Angier March Perkins developed and installed some of the earliest steam-heating systems in the 1830s. The first was installed in the home of Governor of the Bank of England John Horley Palmer so that he could grow grapes in England's cold climate.

Franz San Galli, a Polish-born Russian businessman living in St. Petersburg, invented the radiator between 1855–1857, which was a major step in the final shaping of modern central heating.

Geothermal heating-cooling: Canadians are hot and cold about it

Wind and solar technologies may hog the spotlight (and subsidies) in Ontario, but behind the scene geo-exchange heating and cooling systems are being quietly deployed by the thousands across the province every year.

In fact, Ontario dominates when it comes to deploying these systems, according to a just released national report from the Canadian GeoExchange Coalition, a non-profit organization representing the industry.

The province saw more than 7,000 geothermal heat pump units installed in 2010. This is down from more than 9,000 in each of 2009 and 2008, but far higher than next-best ranking Quebec and British Columbia, which have only installed between 1,000 and 2,000 units annually between 2008 and 2010.

Put another way, Ontario represents nearly two-thirds of the Canadian market in 2010.

Heat pumps are the core part of a geo-exchange system. These devices transfer thermal energy from a warm place — the “source” — to a cooler place — the “sink” — via ethanol-filled plastic tubing laid two metres or deeper underground.

In the winter, the source tends to be the ground (which holds heat from the sun) and the sink is the inside of a building. The system works in reverse in the summer. Heat is carried from a building and dumped into a cooler underground sink.

The ethanol or “working fluid” inside the plastic tubing is what absorbs and carries the heat to its destination.

It has been about 60 years since the first system of this kind was installed in Canada. Credit for that effort goes to Frank Hooper, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at the University of Toronto, who as a university lecturer in the late 1940s worked with the former Ontario Hydro to equip a house in Port Credit with its own geothermal heating and cooling system.

Hooper was fascinated with the efficiency of such systems. Rather than make heat by burning fuel or creating electrical resistance in metal wires, Hooper realized that it made more sense and required less energy to simply shift already existing heat around.

 Some electricity is required to run a geo-exchange system, but, in the case of heating, more than two-thirds of the thermal energy that is delivered comes from the ground. This is why the most efficient geo-exchange systems are as much as 50 per cent more efficient than the best natural gas furnaces and more than 75 per cent more efficient than oil furnaces