Ductwork heating

This part of my site will teach a little about ductwork-heating, but it will also cover a few other areas of heating. If you want full details on this kind of stuff, you can order my house builder book, "Sweat Equity."


Most of the modern cooling systems are built in or close to the heating system to share the ductwork-heating system. So cooling is sort of a part of this too.

This can be a part of a diy-heating-home plan because it's easy to do.

Let's start off with voltage requirements for Electric Heating. It is almost always a 240-volt circuit. It runs cheaper that way. You will need to run a dedicated line to the furnace. The amperage will depend on the specifications of the furnace. Most residential furnaces will be wired with 10-gauge Romex. The fuse at the breaker will depend on the specs, but will probably be at least a 30-amp, 240-volt breaker.

Some Electrical codes make you run 10-3 Romex so you can have 2 hot lines (black and red) and a white neutral line that runs to ground, or in other words goes back to the neutral bus bar in the breaker panel.

The furnaces are quite easy to install and the ductwork-heating system is just a manner of taping the ducts together and running them to all the heat vents throughout the house.

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A simple way to heat our homes is by using wall heaters or baseboard heaters. Every diy-heating-home plan should have at least one of these heaters integrated in. These are easy to install and are much more economical than they ever have been. You can run 12 or 10-gauge Romex for the circuit runs. I prefer 10-gauge cable because it won't get as hot in the walls.

Baseboard-electrical-heater-install-wall units have a thermostat wire that you can plug into a thermostat or you can just set the knob on the desired temperature and they will activate with the temperature.

These circuits are usually on 30-amp, 240-volt breakers.

You can usually have 3 or 4 heaters on one circuit. These heaters come in different sizes. Some use BTU's as a measurement of heated space. You can usually go by wattage for an accurate idea of what size of room it will heat.

1,000 to 2,000 Watts-------Small Room (10X10)
2,000 to 3,000 Watts-------Average size Room (12X16)
3,000 Watts and higher-----Large Rooms (15X20)


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I will cover propane and natural gas heat. As far as gas furnaces, they are quite similar to electric furnaces in the way they plug in to the ductwork-heating system. These systems are easy enough to be part of a diy-heating-home plan.

Fireplaces and stoves are becoming much more popular than ever. They are also much more economical than they ever have been. I really won't cover wood fireplaces or stoves, because they are losing popularity.

I will say this much concerning wood fireplaces; if you live in a place where you can get away with burning wood, then by all means get a wood stove. You should have a secondary heat source though.

Propane and natural gas stoves and fireplaces are nice for ambience and for heating. Make sure either have blowers in them. They won't be economical unless they have a strong fan to move the air around.



The graphic above shows how to vent a gas stove. Some places will have codes against venting like this so be sure you can do it. You might have to use more pipe, but the modern stoves and pipes have the ductwork-heating vented so the fresh air comes in and the exhaust goes out in the same triple-wall pipe.

It's really important to get a tight seal in the pipes or the pilot light will keep getting blown out in the wind.

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