Before You Go Shopping for a Furnace, Do Your Homework

When shopping for a furnace, it’s important you make a well-informed decision. The furnace likely will be in your home for many years to come, so you’ll want to do some research to make sure you get the size and efficiency that’s best for your home, as well as learning about the newly available furnace features you might want.

To ensure proper sizing, work with a quality contractor right from the start. They can perform detailed calculations to determine the heating requirements of your home and what size of furnace will be needed. This is the only way to ensure you home has a properly sized furnace, and it’s worth the effort; improperly sized furnaces are likely to cause comfort and efficiency issues.

If you’re looking for the best deal in the long run, efficiency is a key factor to consider. More efficient furnaces cost more to purchase, but frequently are cheaper in the long run due to the savings they offer on energy bills over their lifespan. How much savings you’ll see from a more efficient furnace depends on a number of things, so you’ll want to have your contractor help figure out what unit offers the best deal for you. In our cold winter climate in Northeast Ohio, higher efficiency can be expected to provide a much quicker return on investment than if you lived in a warmer climate.

When shopping for a furnace, you’ll probably notice new features that weren’t available with older furnaces, including:

• Variable speed blowers. Being able to operate at less than full speed improves the durability and energy efficiency of your furnace’s blower motor and other components. It can also be combined with variable heating to improve heating efficiency.
• Sealed combustion. By having furnace with a burner that’s sealed off from your home’s air, you eliminate the possibility that byproducts of combustion will impact air quality.
• Advanced ignition systems. These avoid having a pilot light that is always lit, which is good for efficiency and your home’s air quality.
• Dual heat exchangers. The more efficient furnaces will have these present in order to extract more heat from the combustion process.

For more help shopping for a furnace, please contact us at Stack Heating, Cooling, Plumbing and Electric today. We’ve been serving the Greater Cleveland area since 1976.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Cleveland, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about furnaces and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

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