Home Heating Options
Home heating options in Nova Scotia include electricity, wood, gas, oil, solar and geothermal heat.
No matter what type of heat you use in your home, there are ways to heat your home more efficiently - reducing your fuel costs and contributing to a cleaner environment.
Electricity
Electric heat is a popular home heating option for Nova Scotians.
It offers convenience, eliminates combustion or fuel-storage concerns and provides predictable pricing.
Types of electric heat include baseboard heaters, electric boilers, electric furnaces, electric radiant heating, and heat pumps.
For a detailed look at this topic, download our Introduction to Home Heating brochure.
Wood Heating
Firewood is a renewable source of heat in Nova Scotia, and usually the cheapest heating fuel available.
The most common wood heating appliances are wood stoves and fireplaces, furnaces and boilers, and pellet stoves.
EPA-approved wood stoves use 25% less wood than older models and reduce smoke by as much as 90%.
You can save money and reduce air pollution in your neighborhood with the help of the tips included.
Burn it Hot Brochure (802 KB)
Buying and Measuring Stacked Firewood Brochure (437 KB)
Buying and Storing your Winter's Wood Brochure (135 KB)
For more material on wood burning in Nova Scotia, please call us at 902-424-5364 or contact Natural Resources Canada at 1-800-387-2000.
For a detailed look at this topic, download the Burn it Hot brochure.
Pellet Burning Appliances
Pellet stoves, furnace, and boilers can be a good way to heat your home, depending on your situation. In pellet burning appliances, pellets are poured into an integral storage hopper and fed into the combustion chamber of the appliance by an auger. Pellets are usually made from waste wood that is converted at high pressure into small homogenous cylinders with consistent energy and moisture content. Pellets are an indigenous fuel source, and are considered to be carbon neutral if CO2 emissions due to their transport and manufacture are not considered.
Pellet-burning appliances differ from solid wood burning appliances in a number of ways:
- Many pellet stoves can operate automatically for over 24 hours, and some furnaces and boilers can operate for weeks at a time. Unlike a solid wood-burning appliance, you would not need to rely on your back-up fuel source to heat your home if you were away for an extended period of time. Automatic operation also allows for control of heat output through a thermostat. One downside of automation, however, is that a backup generator or battery is required if you wish to use your pellet burning appliance during a power outage;
- Pellet stoves are usually more costly than wood stoves, though installation may be cheaper because pellet appliances do not require a chimney, but rather a side vent;
- Pellets are easier to handle than wood so may be a better option if lifting and stacking wood does not appeal to you; and
- Pellet fuel tends to be more expensive than wood, although pellet appliances are usually more efficient that wood burning appliances, so require less fuel for the same heat output. Pellet appliances can reach efficiencies of 80%. Pellet boilers and furnaces can even have efficiency ratings above 90%. It is important to ask your dealer for efficiency information. Kerr is the only Nova Scotian manufacturer of an efficient pellet boiler (efficiency of ~82%).
For more information about wood pellets please review:
Natural Gas / Propane
Natural gas and propane are similar fuels with important differences.
Propane is delivered by truck and stored as a liquid in a pressurized storage tank on your property.
It is sold by volume, is heavier than air, and contains a third less energy per litre than heating oil.
Natural gas is composed primarily of methane, is lighter than air, and burns only when the fuel/air ratio is between 4 and 10%.
It is supplied to residential customers as a low-pressure gas via underground polyethylene pipe.
Customers are billed the heating value, measured in gigajoules (GJ), of the gas consumed.
Most gas equipment can burn either propane or natural gas.
Residential uses include home heating, domestic hot water, cooking, clothes drying, barbecuing, and even outdoor lighting.
For a detailed look at this topic, download our Hot Water Answers brochure.
Oil Heating
Furnace oil is the most popular home heating fuel in Nova Scotia.
Warm-air furnaces and boilers are most common type of appliances, but efficient oil space heaters are now also available.
Most new oil systems can be equipped with sidewall venting equipment to allow installation in homes without a chimney.
Although a variety of certified venting systems are available, it may not be possible to find a location for a sidewall vent that meets all code requirements in every home.
The two most common types of venting equipment available are power-venting systems and direct-vent systems.
For a detailed look at this topic, download our Introduction to Home Heating brochure.
Solar
Many Nova Scotia homes use passive solar heat with little additional cost or effort.
Passive solar heat means using the heat of the suns rays without the use of mechanical equipment, like pumps or fans by taking full advantage of the sun shining through the windows.
You can take advantage of passive solar heating when building a new home by carefully choosing the size and location of windows and using a floor plan that positions primary living spaces on the south side of your home.
Ideally, your garage or storage areas of your home would be positioned on the north side.
Even in existing homes, you can benefit from passive solar heat.
If your home contains some of these features, you should be able to benefit from passive solar heating to some degree.
In new homes, with proper design and location, it's possible to obtain about 40% of the total heat requirement from the sun.
For a detailed look at this topic, download our Passive Solar Homes brochure.
Heat Pumps
Heat pumps can either supply or remove heat from your home by circulating a refrigerant between two heat-exchange coils.
To supply heat, low-pressure liquid refrigerant is evaporated by absorbing low-grade heat from the air, water, or ground.
When the evaporated refrigerant is mechanically compressed, the temperature of the gas increases.
Heat is released when this pressurized gas condenses back into a liquid.
Heat pumps can cool a home by reversing this process.
For a detailed look at this topic, download our Introduction to Home Heating brochure.