Here in New Zealand, most houses do not have any central heating installed, they will only have a heater or log fire in the lounge and the rest of the house will not have anything causing mould to grow in winter if not careful. Is it true that most american houses have a good heating system installed?
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Central heating and air are very very common.
I don’t have statistics for you, but in my experience, it is common, yes.
[Google says](https://www.quora.com/Do-all-American-homes-have-a-central-heating-system-with-a-thermostat-situation-or-is-that-just-a-rich-American-thing#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20survey%20taken,of%20varying%20levels%20of%20sophistication.&text=All%20Americans%20don't%20have,with%20a%20%E2%80%9Cthermostat%E2%80%9D%20situation):
^(“)According to a survey taken by the federal government in 2015, **about 60 percent** of U.S. homes use a central furnace for their principal heating sources.”
Most parts of [many states](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/hottest-states) don’t really need central heating because they rarely get below 60F/15.5C.
The real question is why anyone would NOT have central heating and cooling installed? It is the truest sign of civilization.
We have a heat pump, which is like a central air conditioner that can both cool and heat. For heating, it kind of operates in reverse instead of using a heat source like a regular heater. These are becoming more common in warmer climates because they’re very efficient in above-freezing temperatures.
It’s necessary for many of us. I live in the Northeastern US. Our low temp this year was 0F (-18C) and our high so far has been 95F (36C).
I couldn’t imagine living without it.
The house we’re in the process of moving out of has oil-fired hot water baseboard heat, with half a dozen zones, each with its own thermostat.
The house we’re moving into has natural gas, forced air heat. It only has one thermostat, which is kind of a bummer, but it still should be sufficient for sub-Arctic winters.
Wait, you guys don’t have central heating?
Almost all new construction home are built with central heating and cooling units. Older homes, especially those built before the 70’s, almost always do not unless the owner made the upgrade. Where I’m located in MA almost every house uses window cooling units because the way the homes were built make installing duct work very difficult if not impossible.
I live in the upper part of the country and I don’t know a single person who doesn’t have central heating and cooling. When it’s cold, it’s cold as balls. When it’s hot, it’s hot as hell. So we need it for sure.
Most modern houses will have central heating and air conditioning, regardless of the climate where they are built. The logic there being that you’ll probably want one or the other throughout the year (or both) so since you already have to put in the duct work you might as well install both systems.
Older homes from before the spread of central A/C will traditionally heat the home with radiators or electric baseboard heating although many nowadays will install minisplit air conditioning/heating systems in most of the major living spaces and bedrooms if the house is difficult to install ducts in.
My 100 year old house has been retrofit for central a/c and heat long before I bought it.
South Florida checking in, and we have an HVAC system. We have NEVER, and i do mean never used our central heating. But it’s there in case hell does actually freeze over.
I’ve never been in a building without it and I’ve lived in a few states, one of them being Florida lol
HVAC is very common. My parents were Respiratory Therapists and we had a wood stove growing up. Someone new moved nearby and complained to the town about the smoke and how it was “killing” her child. Small town and any issues would have probably been seen by my parents so the town and everyone else knew they were full of bs.
Yes, most houses in the US have a forced-air central furnace.
Most of the country gets cold enough to need it for part of the year.
Quite common.
In the Midwest we have 3 months of sub freezing weather and in the summer we have 3 months of high humidity 80-100 degree weather. Central heat and air is a must.
There are regions of the US that stay below 0c for weeks in the winter, even during the daytime. A centrally located heater is not going to cut it.
In the midwest most older houses have water radiators but everything built at least since the 1970s has HVAC systems.
My home is about 300 square meters and we have a two zone forced-air (two HVAC units) system. The heat component is natural gas fired. Mould is never an issue. The air gets dry enough that we actually have humidifiers attached to the output ducts to add moisture to the air.
Yes, we do because we need to. The US gets some very big temperature swings.
Yes, central heating is the norm.
Most homes in the United States have a forced air system. Some have radiant heating systems that either have radiators in every room or tubes under the floor that circulate an antifreeze fluid. Check out this video.
https://youtu.be/lBVvnDfW2Xo?si=Qa_QkS4JbgE7ADTk
Outside of the Amish who don’t use electricity, I don’t know of any house that doesn’t have central heating. I’m sure there is some really old home somewhere as well. Now older homes may not have central air and use window units, however central heat seems standard. Our homes are built to breathe so there is less concern about mold. When I lived in Germany we had to air out of apartment multiple times a day because of mold concerns but everything there seemed to be built with cinder block and concrete.
Super common to have central heat and air. I can’t even fathom how uncomfortable it would be to sleep or rest in a house that is too cold or hot!
When I lived in San Diego, we had neither central heat nor air
About twice I put the electric radiant ceiling heat on. And twice I wished I had AC.
It was fairly common everywhere I lived. Even the apartments I lived in had HVAC systems. Granted, all the apartments I lived in were in the Southeast US.
When I lived in Washington, we had central heat but no AC. We bought a rollaway unit for one room to basically use as an air filter when there was smoke everywhere.
We have HVAC, so we have central heating in winter and central cooling in the summer. We also have a fireplace, but it’s more because we like the look of it than actual heat. It’s gas and only really warms the room it’s in.
yeah, my house still has radiators and no AC because it’s old and we have pretty cold winters (lows can easily get to -30 C)
I have a hot water heating system with radiators throughout the house. No central air.
If we didn’t have heat throughout the house, the pipes would freeze in the winter
HVAC is very common.
I don’t know if the radiator in my apt. counts but yeah, those in the North do. I’m not dealing with that cold I have, like, zero body fat despite the amount of crap I eat.
Basically 100% of homes have central heating
Other people mentioned central AC. It is much less common but I would guess that more that 50% of homes have it
You can [see the data here](https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2020/state/pdf/State%20Space%20Heating.pdf)– basically about 85% of American homes have central heating, most often a furnace (gas, oil, or electric fired), followed by heat pumps and finally boilers. The remainder have *some* source of heat, usually a woodstove or other stand-alone unit. [Air conditioning is now at a 90% plus](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=52558) market penetration as well, though many of those are “window units” that only cool one room; the split is about 2/3 central air and another 20% limited point-of-use units.
Keep in mind OP that the US is a continental nation with climates ranging from Mediterranean to alpine, desert to rainforest, blistering hot (+45 C) to numbingly cold (-40 C) depending on location and season. The parts of the US where one can be comfortable without heating and/or aircon are basically limited to some areas by the coasts– and then only the coastal zone with warm water, since the nothern Pacific and Atlantic are both cold.
Yes to central heating, not so much central air conditioning here in northern New England
Central heating and air conditioning is so common it’s pretty much expected. The only houses that don’t have it would be historical houses that are a museum or something like that, built in the 1800’s.
But shit, even my brother’s house was built in 1780 and he has been modified to have central AC… he’s got two wood stoves for heat.
Central heating and air are very common in the US. They’re nearly universal in any construction made in the last few decades.
Almost all office spaces have them, as well as all homes built in the last 30 to 40 years have it.
Most of the US has pretty wildly varying temperatures throughout the year. Where I live in Kentucky, the low temperatures in winter can be as cold as 0 F (-17 C) and can get to around 100 F in the summer (38 C). Central heating and air conditioning is a way of keeping a house habitable in such wild swings in temperature.
Central heating is so essential in Minnesota that gas companies aren’t allowed to shut off your gas for not paying your bill in the winter. Not having heat up here is a death sentence.
We’d literally freeze to death in the winter without it.
The vast majority of houses in the US have full HVAC, both heat and A/C.
But if you’re asking about heat alone, I’ve never been to a house that doesnt have central heat. What else do you do in the winter? Only use the fireplace and that’s it?
Granted I’m from Ohio so it gets cold here. Maybe if I visited the south, there may be homes without heat
Laughs in -30c.
Yes. Yes, we have heat.
Central heating and central air conditioning.
In western Pennsylvania it can get below freezing for months at a time and in the summer we frequently stay in the 80s/sometimes 90s (30s/40s in Celsius) until late September.
The months of September/early October and sometimes April/May are the only months when I can turn off my HVAC system.
My house was built in 1934 so it is very old.
It’s absolutely ubitiqious in the north, the only exection might be very rural vacation properties. In the south you do have older houses that rely on electric baseboard heat, or else in-wall natural gas units. From what I’ve seen newer houses in the south have central heat too.
Older houses might have steam or hot water radiators, but after the war, which is the vast majority of our houses, they switched to forced air, the main reason being that it’s simple to add air conditiong. My 1960s house didn’t originally include central air conditioning, but it was retrofittted 10 years after and air conditioning has been universal in new construction since the 1970s. Owners of older houses with hot water heat rely on window units or mini-splits for air conditioning.
> Is it true that most american houses have a good heating system installed?
Where I live, it gets as low -30°F (-33°C), at the lowest, in the winter. For consistent temperatures, it gets to around -10°F (-23°C).
Every house has central heating, of some form.
Older houses may have steam or hot water radiators, but generally the newer houses have forced air natural gas furnaces. Some very new houses might have heat pumps – but they’re centralized, not a per-room type of thing.
Without centralized heating, there’s no good way to keep your whole house habitable. A single log fire in the living room (maybe this is what you call a “lounge”) would warm up that room, leaving the rest of the house basically a refrigerator. Not to mention, pipes freezing is a real concern.
Sometimes people will keep their furnace’s thermostat low – as low as 62°F (16°C) – and then use a [pellet stove](https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/pellet-stove/) to heat the living room area. But they still run their furnace – because otherwise would be a *big* issue.
>the rest of the house will not have anything causing mould to grow in winter if not careful.
Our winters get so dry, I’d be shocked if mold grew anywhere. All the ambient moisture is locked up in snow.
>Here in New Zealand, most houses do not have any central heating installed,
In my area, while basically every house has central heating, most houses don’t have central air conditioning.
[Window air conditioning units](https://digital.hammacher.com/Items/90465/90465_1000x1000.jpg) are common. In the past decade or so, it’s gotten more common for people to retrofit a central air conditioning system into their existing forced air furnace.
I’m Australian.
We have central heating.
If you ever watch American TV or movies, if you see vents on the ceiling or floor, that’s the central air. It’s so ubiquitous, it would be almost impossible to find a home without central air in all 50 states. Even RV’s have heaters and AC.