[rcxdude]

Heating has strong 'follow the crowd' effects: the cost of different options are heavily influenced by what's already commonly used in the local area, because the supply chain will be optimised, and local workers will be most familiar with what's most popular. Bucking the trend in any way sets you up for higher hardware costs and much higher installations and maintenance costs, even if in a different country the same option would be the most economical. (I have experienced the same pain, in a country where most heating is plumbing and radiator based, having a house set up for central air heating and wanting a replacement for the central unit, it was almost the same cost to replace that central unit as it was to rip out the whole thing and replace it with radiators, which is ridiculous on the face of it but a consequence of the supply of parts and labor for each option).