..more of the reason that any house I ever build in the future will have heating and cooling accomplished with mini-split heat pump(s). No worries about ductwork losses, carbon monoxide concerns, and an install that I would potentially do myself and save plenty of money by not dealing with extensive ductwork design that will likely not be done extensively like it should be. Then again I'm planning on building small, super insulated, and geometrically simple, so with that sort of plan even the smallest condensing furnace sold today (40k BTU) wouldn't even run for 10 minutes over the period of an hour during the course of the night. With that kind of load you can heat one area of the house and since you aren't battling heat loss from everywhere else, the heat transfer is enough to where it remains comfortable everywhere with a single point source. The only challenge is two floors because heating is best accomplished downstairs and cooling is best done upstairs although good insulation and air sealing should keep temperatures comfortable enough via convection even with heating only upstairs as long as there aren't shut doors in the way. I'm planning to build single story slab(insulated) on grade to avoid loss of square footage and design challenges that stairs add and the HVAC challenge. Not to mention that I prefer to build a house that I could grow old in and not need to think about dealing with climbing stairs when age makes it difficult.
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