Edward
2024 Supporter
Today's customers compelled me to come pass a little advice to my Brothers and Sisters here. If your furnace is old and you're considering replacement to a new high efficiency unit, do your homework on them. Don't just call your trusted heating outfit and accept their recommendations of which unit you should get without sleeping on it, doing a little bit of research yourself. Most companies will come and tell you get the most efficient unit that you can. Lowering your monthly gas bill is not the only consideration. Yes, it is nice to lower your bills. But if you let the salesman in them sell you a top of the line unit, understand that it is his job to try and sell the top of the line equipment and they are very good at it. There are some things that they will not tell you. Important things.
They can make the efficiency of the unit sound like it would be stupid to get anything less. That is not necessarily true though. There's 80% efficient units, 85% efficient units, 90% efficiency units, 92%, 94%, 95%, and 97% efficient units. To understand the efficiency of the unit, think on it like this: for every dollars worth of gas that the unit burns, it will give you 80, or 90 cents worth of usable heat in your home from it. SO an 80% efficient unit gives you 80 cents worth of heat, a 92% efficient unit, 92 cents on the dollar, and so forth. sounds good, huh? So a 97% efficient furnace will save you 17% more gas than an 80% efficient unit, every month and this savings is real. WHoa, sign me up, I'll take the 97% efficient furnace, I want to save money!
Not so fast there, my friends! While the savings is real, look to the future. Warranties are very competitve nowadays and your new unit will probably come with a 10 year parts warranty regardless of the unit. No more worries there, right? Uhh, better rethink that one too. How fast did the last 10 years go for you? Quick. One day, that baby will be yours and yours alone to get repairs done on.
I'm in the business. It is a fact that the 95% and up furnaces cost significantly more to repair. The parts are a LOT more than for the lesser efficiency units. So you can take that 17% savings and put it in an envelope and saver it. Because when it comes time to repair that unit, you will be paying all that savings back. Not to mention reliability. The higher efficiency units have more features, bells and whistles. The more that CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong. They are not as reliable.
This town I'm in is overflowing with 95% and 97% efficient furnaces. They really push the high end stuff here. Monday of this week, I changed a vent motor on an 80% efficient furnace. Cost to the customer was about $350. Last week, I changed a vent motor on a 97% efficient furnace (that was out of warranty!)...Cost to the customer...a little over 1600 dollars. That's no typo, sixteen hundred. Where is their savings now?! I have installed a few highly efficient furnaces when I was a contractor in Colorado Springs, but to customers which asked for them. I did not push them. I pushed the furnaces that I believe in. The ones that I would put in my home.
The best furnaces going now, in terms of...efficiency, reliability, and future repair costs are the two stage 80% furnaces. The parts are pretty reasonably priced and they burn less gas. Most new furnaces have burners which are 25,000 btu's each when they come on. A two stage, has two stages of heat, low-fire and high-fire. In low fire they are 17,000 btu's each. In high fire, 25,000 btu's. When it fires up, it's running at 17K btu's per burner. If the thermostat does not get satisfied in 12 minutes, then the unit kicks into high fire. It is mild weather most of the time. It will run in low fire most of the time, using less gas. Only in the coldest part of winter will it need to kick in to high fire. These furnaces make the most sense to me as a homeowner.
That lady who paid 1600 dollars for a repair was not happy. She...didn't think about these things when she had that big bad 97%er put in. She regrets it, she said. I'm starting to hear these things more and more here in this town. People regretting getting top of the line equipment and finding out after the fact that, they are not as reliable as the lesser units, and cost more to repair. I work on more 90+furnaces than I do the 80+ furnaces by far. It makes me feel bad to see people go through this. Their furnace salesman wouldn't tell them these things, and if you ask them is it expensive to repair, they'll just flaunt the 10 year warranty and change the subject on you. Take it from a tech who fixes them...be careful what you have installed. There's more to savings than a lower monthly gas bill.
They can make the efficiency of the unit sound like it would be stupid to get anything less. That is not necessarily true though. There's 80% efficient units, 85% efficient units, 90% efficiency units, 92%, 94%, 95%, and 97% efficient units. To understand the efficiency of the unit, think on it like this: for every dollars worth of gas that the unit burns, it will give you 80, or 90 cents worth of usable heat in your home from it. SO an 80% efficient unit gives you 80 cents worth of heat, a 92% efficient unit, 92 cents on the dollar, and so forth. sounds good, huh? So a 97% efficient furnace will save you 17% more gas than an 80% efficient unit, every month and this savings is real. WHoa, sign me up, I'll take the 97% efficient furnace, I want to save money!
Not so fast there, my friends! While the savings is real, look to the future. Warranties are very competitve nowadays and your new unit will probably come with a 10 year parts warranty regardless of the unit. No more worries there, right? Uhh, better rethink that one too. How fast did the last 10 years go for you? Quick. One day, that baby will be yours and yours alone to get repairs done on.
I'm in the business. It is a fact that the 95% and up furnaces cost significantly more to repair. The parts are a LOT more than for the lesser efficiency units. So you can take that 17% savings and put it in an envelope and saver it. Because when it comes time to repair that unit, you will be paying all that savings back. Not to mention reliability. The higher efficiency units have more features, bells and whistles. The more that CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong. They are not as reliable.
This town I'm in is overflowing with 95% and 97% efficient furnaces. They really push the high end stuff here. Monday of this week, I changed a vent motor on an 80% efficient furnace. Cost to the customer was about $350. Last week, I changed a vent motor on a 97% efficient furnace (that was out of warranty!)...Cost to the customer...a little over 1600 dollars. That's no typo, sixteen hundred. Where is their savings now?! I have installed a few highly efficient furnaces when I was a contractor in Colorado Springs, but to customers which asked for them. I did not push them. I pushed the furnaces that I believe in. The ones that I would put in my home.
The best furnaces going now, in terms of...efficiency, reliability, and future repair costs are the two stage 80% furnaces. The parts are pretty reasonably priced and they burn less gas. Most new furnaces have burners which are 25,000 btu's each when they come on. A two stage, has two stages of heat, low-fire and high-fire. In low fire they are 17,000 btu's each. In high fire, 25,000 btu's. When it fires up, it's running at 17K btu's per burner. If the thermostat does not get satisfied in 12 minutes, then the unit kicks into high fire. It is mild weather most of the time. It will run in low fire most of the time, using less gas. Only in the coldest part of winter will it need to kick in to high fire. These furnaces make the most sense to me as a homeowner.
That lady who paid 1600 dollars for a repair was not happy. She...didn't think about these things when she had that big bad 97%er put in. She regrets it, she said. I'm starting to hear these things more and more here in this town. People regretting getting top of the line equipment and finding out after the fact that, they are not as reliable as the lesser units, and cost more to repair. I work on more 90+furnaces than I do the 80+ furnaces by far. It makes me feel bad to see people go through this. Their furnace salesman wouldn't tell them these things, and if you ask them is it expensive to repair, they'll just flaunt the 10 year warranty and change the subject on you. Take it from a tech who fixes them...be careful what you have installed. There's more to savings than a lower monthly gas bill.
Gimme me a 5 yr labor warranty buddy! Lol.
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