Furnaces

  • All gas furnaces require a vent. This is the easiest way to tell, if your furnace has at least 1 pipe of 2” or 3” PVC hooked to it that goes outside the home, it is some version of a high efficiency furnace.

    If your furnace uses a 3” or 4” round metal pipe for the vent, you have a furnace that is 80% or less efficient.

  • All gas furnaces come ready to burn natural gas, and would need a conversion kit for propane. This conversion must be done by a qualified technician.

    Fuel oil systems can not have a regular furnace installed, they must be a special fuel oil furnace, and finding companies that will still repair and install fuel oil systems are becoming more and more rare. Many folks choose to have a Propane tank set and a standard furnace installed if their fuel oil furnace goes out.

  • High efficiency, at it’s basic term, means the appliance has the ability to pull more energy out than previous technology in that field. In the heating world, this means the hot metal vent pipe of old furnaces can be replaced by PVC for the exhaust, because the furnace can pull almost ALL the heat out of the exhaust, before it leaves the home.

    If you buy $1 worth of gas from the utility, and get .80 cents worth of heat, .20 cents of your dollar goes out the chimney as hot gas.

    With the switch to high efficiency, the same dollar of gas will get you .96 cents worth of heat, only sending .04 cents out the window.

  • 96-97% is top efficiency for any furnace.

    Price goes up to achieve higher levels of comfort, mainly.

    Best way to imagine this is to think of an above ground pool. Top few inches of water are warm, bottom is colder by a few degrees. Think of the water like your home, and the uneven temperatures throughout your home.

    Single Stage furnaces are like If a big grown adult did 1 cannonball into the pool. They will mix up SOME of the water, but not all.

    Two Stage furnaces Or, what if a medium size person did a few cannonballs, and would mix up the water even more.

    Modulating Furnaces are like if we put several small children in the water for an hour. The water will be perfectly mixed when they get out.

WHAT MAKES THEM DIFFERENT

It’s all in the parts-

The gas valve, the fan, and the inducer motor. These parts specifically, make a furnace different.

The gas valve-

In single stage, it’s either 100% on, or 100% off.

In 2 stage, it can come on at either 40% or 100%, two options.

Modulating is full range, from 40%, 41%, 42%, 43%, all the way up to 100%

giving it about 60 different options for how much heat to put out.

The fan-

Single speed fan, on or off. We can unplug and plug different wires to make the speeds different, but when it comes on, it’s only at that speed. There are more wires connected to this motor, So the furnace CAN tell it to come on at different speeds, like one speed9wire) for fan only, a different speed(wire) for heating, a different speed(wire) for cooling. But when the cooling is on, it is only on at that one speed. So, they will have multiple wires connected, and call for “low” for heating, and “high” for cooling. But you could not run the cooling fan in “low” without switching where the wires are connected on the control board, which we cannot recommend you do.

Two stage does not exist in fans, just multiple speeds as described above, or the option where you CAN ramp up and down all the way, so each mode (heating, cooling, fan) would have full range of blower. This makes system soft and quiet, uses less energy(one of the biggest electrical eaters in the furnace)

And makes the system as a whole, better.

The inducer-

This is another fan, this one pulls the exhaust out of the home. This fan comes in single speed, it can also come in a 2 speed model, where it can do low or high, and it can come in fully modulating as well.

Single speed furnaces, all 3 components are single speed.

2 stage level 1- gas valve 2 speed, both fans single speed.

2 stage level 2- gas valve 2 speed, main fan variable, inducer single speed.

2 stage level 3- Gas valve 2 stage, Main fan variable, inducer variable.

Modulating- all 3 components fully modulate.