Last year my wife and I decided that it was time to buy a home. We were getting tired of paying rent and another person’s mortgage.

When we started to look for our ideal home, we came across a lot of overpriced older homes in the area we wanted to live in. Our other option was to look for a piece of land and build our dream home.

That’s what we decided to do. This was exciting for both of us as we got to be the architects and design our dream home. With the help of a qualified builder, that is certainly a possibility.

When it came to heading the home, my wife wanted a nice natural gas fireplace. But that wasn’t going to heat the whole home and it was going to be expensive. She then suggested we use baseboards throughout the rest of the home to provide the heat. Sure that would be cheaper at the beginning but it would be expensive in the long run since our home was going to be pretty big.

That’s when I suggested we look at heat pumps as an alternative to baseboards and a natural gas fireplace. A heat pump would also use its reverse acting cycle to cool our home in the summer months. The temperatures don’t get super hot during our summers but it can cause some uncomfortable days and nights.

The heat pump would cost a bit more upfront but the energy used to power them was going to be less than the natural gas and baseboards.

My wife was on board. But she still wanted a fireplace as a design piece for the home.

Our general contractor suggested he build the fireplace but use fake wood and put glass over the front. That worked for both her and I and we did just that.

It’s now April and a full winter after leaving in our new home, I can say that the heat pump was a great idea. I’ve gone over all of the energy bills and operational costs where a big more than having a natural gas fireplace and baseboards.

In the long run, we’ll recoup that though as we now know how to operate the heat pump. With summer around the corner, I’m looking forward to being able to sleep at nights thanks to the heat pump extracting the heat from the home and pushing it outside.

I’m sure you’ll agree that sleeping in the summer is tough. An air conditioner is a good option but it’s inside the room and also very noisy. A heat pump is staged outside the home and very, very quiet.

So if you’re building a new home, be sure to look into buying a heat pump to cool and heat your home like we did.