Heating and Cooling a Sectional Home
There’s nothing worse than being cold all winter (except maybe being too warm all summer), so we’d thought we’d take a moment to talk about your options for heating and cooling a sectional home.
Sectional (or HUD-code) homes come with a forced air heating package installed from the factory with one of three fuel types: natural or LP gas, fuel oil, or electricity. Typically, the house furnace is air conditioner (A/C) ready which means you can purchase an A/C unit and install it after the home is installed on your site. The A/C unit consists of two parts: a coil installed in the furnace and a condenser unit, installed outside the home. 
However, you don’t have to stop with air conditioning. We also offer energy-efficient heat pumps, which do most of the heating work as well. When installing a heat pump, we order the house with an electric furnace, which will be used as a backup. A heat pump works by extracting heat from the outside air in the winter to heat the house, and coolness from the air in the summer to cool the house. Ask us about how a heat pump can save you money.
There are a few things that you should be aware of. HUD-code, or sectional, homes do not offer hot water baseboard or electric baseboard heat. Additionally, the furnace is a down-draft furnace and is not sized to heat a foundation. So, if you are putting a HUD-code or sectional home on a basement you will need a separate heat source for the basement. You may also be asked if you want perimeter heat. This options allows for the floor vents to be located along the perimeter of the home instead of in the center of the home. With the perimeter vents, you will not have a floor vent in the middle of the floor. This allows greater freedom in placing furniture.
Sectional homes are tightly built homes, which makes them inexpensive to heat and cool. Finally, you can also inquire about ENERGY STAR homes which are built to conform to the Federal ENERGY STAR standards. 
These standards are higher than the standard in the HUD code. An example of this (from Colony Homes) include upgraded floor, wall and ceiling insulation, a programmable thermostat, auto- ignition gas furnace and low-E glass vinyl windows. This package will cost approximately $600-800 and is well worth the initial cost. You will be compensated in reduced heating and air conditioning bills. You can upgrade any one of these components individually as well.
As always, our friendly and knowledgeable staff is ready and waiting to answer any questions you may have. Please feel free to e-mail us, call, or stop in today!
