I live in an area with extremely cold winter weather and brutal heat and humidity in the summer.
There is rarely a time when I don’t need to rely on some type of temperature control. With temperatures down to negative twenty and up into the high nineties, the heating and cooling systems carry a very demanding workload. The cost of keeping a comfortable home is a big drain on the budget. I spent a small fortune to implement a dual fuel system into my home. A dual fuel system combines a natural gas furnace with an electric heat pump. The heat pump runs the majority of the time. It handles cooling all summer long, acting very much like a conventional air conditioner. The benefit of the heat pump is that it combats humidity and provides exceptional efficiency levels. When the weather cools off, it reverses operation to provide heat. The system finds ambient heat in the outdoor air, compresses it to a higher temperature and supplies very clean, quiet comfort. It doesn’t burn fossil fuels to create heat, so there’s no fumes, hot surfaces, carbon monoxide or greenhouse gases. The system is totally safe and environmentally friendly. The drawback of the heat pump is that it’s only effective until the outdoor temperature drops below freezing. At that point, there’s simply not enough ambient heat available and the system struggles to meet demands. With a dual fuel system, the furnace automatically takes over. The furnace is plenty powerful enough to handle the worse winter temperatures. I save money, enjoy ideal comfort and because the systems share responsibilities, they should both last longer.