The Night Our Furnace Died
Earlier this week, our old furnace fought what turned out to be its final valiant battle against the cold. We heard a series of BOOMS coming from the basement, and it turns out that our furnace's heat exchanger was severely rusted and nearly inoperable, causing “flame blowback.” The verdict: We need a new furnace. Immediately. Read more on our blog post!
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I read this post and visited your blog and found some interesting things that I thought I might share with you. By the photo you have it appears that you have a condensing furnace. This is noticeable by the plastic vent pipe that exits the furnace. You talked about the heat exchanger having issues but was unable to provide additional information on just what that was or what it looks like. I have provided a few sketches of heat exchangers to help you and others out. While the ones I am providing are a bit different then the style your furnace has, they all work about the same. Often with a radiator style coil pre-heating the air that comes from the house then the heat exchanger adds the additional heat to bring it up to the discharge temp of around 120 degrees. You also stated that your looking forward to a more efficient heating and AC system with the replacement of the furnace and cooling system. Your not going to see to much of a return on your heating system as your pretty much on the higher end efficiency already. However with a ECM blower motor and properly sized system your electrical bill will go down both during the heating and cooling season. Not knowing what you have in the way of the AC system, I would assume based on the age and efficiency of the current furnace, I would assume your current cooling system is rated around 12 seer which was a pretty high end unit when that furnace was first purchased. With seer ratings around 16% you will see a much better or lower electrical bill at the end of each month. To really improve your homes comfort, be sure that the contractor properly air seals all the ducts. That alone on an older duct system will improve not only your comfort but will in some cases increase your delivered efficiency to the rooms by as much as 20%! Lastly I also read that your were looking at the different equipment available. While that is important, what is even more important is the quality of the install. Newer HVAC equipment is pretty much the same with qualities. All manufactures have low end so called builders units, standard equipment which would be mid efficiency rated, and high end equipment that provides the most efficiency and cost savings while providing you with a more quite system and expensive unit overall. So the most important issue is the quality of the install. It has nothing to do with the equipment you purchase. You can go with a name brand that is popular in your area, or choose one that many people have not heard about and get the same quality without the cost of the name brand. But get it installed incorrectly regardless of the brand, you will be a unhappy camper when it comes time to work when you most need it. Be sure that the contractor performs a Manual J heat load on the house to be sure of exactly what size heating system your home needs or requires. Do not rely on the current size as often its much larger then what the house really needs. With high performance equipment this is even more important. In any case, good luck with the new equipment. And take photo of the old coming out and the new going in!
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