Heating Your Home with Natural Gas | CenterPoint Energy

A forced-air system heats air in a furnace and uses a fan to force the warmed air through ductwork to the home's rooms. A gas furnace delivers consistently warmer heat than alternative options such as a heat pump, which delivers heat closer to body temperature.​

As the warmed air is pumped into the room, it is mixed with the cooler existing air until the desired room temperature is achieved. At the same time as warmed air is being pumped into a room, some of the older, cooler air in the room is pushed into the return air ductwork to be reheated and recycled through the home.

A boiler system heats fluid (typically water, glycol or a mixture) and pumps the warmed fluid to a heat exchanger such as an in-floor system or baseboard radiator.

The baseboard radiator or floor conducts heat from the heated fluid. This heat is transferred via radiation to the rooms' objects. As cooler air comes in contact with warm objects (including the radiator), it warms and rises, creating a convective loop, mixing to the desired temperature.

A heat pump is part of a home heating and cooling system. Like an air conditioner such as central air, it can cool your home, but it’s also capable of providing heat. In cooler months, a heat pump pulls heat from the cold outdoor air and transfers it indoors, and in warmer months, it pulls heat out of indoor air to cool your home. They are powered by electricity and transfer heat using refrigerant. 

A ground source heat pump can heat or cool a home by either:

• Collecting heat from the ground and pumping it inside to provide home heating, or
• Cooling the home by collecting heat from the home and pumping it into the ground.​​​
  

A ground source heat pump typically requires a supplemental heating system for below zero temperatures and later in the heating season when the latent heat in the ground has been exhausted​.

An air-source heat pump collects heat from the outside air during the fall and spring heating seasons and delivers it to the home exactly the same as a home's air conditioner would if operated in reverse.

When temperatures drop below freezing, an air source heat pump typically cannot deliver enough heat to the home and another back-up, such as a natural gas furnace is needed, to provide supplemental heat. These systems are called dual-fuel systems.​

Electric resistance heating converts nearly 100 percent of the energy in the electricity to heat. However, this electricity is supplied by power generators that deliver only about 27 percent of the fuel's energy to the home or business due to combustion and transmission/distribution line losses.​

Electric resistance heating is significantly more expensive than heating your home with natural gas. Use our operating cost calculator to see how you could benefit from choosing natural gas versus electricity.