About Me

Preparing for My Dream Home

My husband and I have spent a lot of time consulting with an architect. After living in our cramped, starter home for the past 11 years, we were finally ready to make some needed changes to it. We have added an extra 600 square feet of space onto our house. Before the construction began, we finalized the plans for our new heating and air conditioning unit with our HVAC contractor. Because our home was going to be substantially bigger than it is now, we purchased a larger HVAC system. We also installed a new, digital thermostat inside my home. On this blog, I hope you will discover the best types of HVAC units to buy for mid-size homes. Enjoy!

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Preparing for My Dream Home

Why Should You Consider A Newer Furnace?

by Rita Richardson

You can find plenty of estimates for the lifespan of a typical gas furnace. Of course, reality doesn't always line up neatly with those guesses. The lifespan of your home's furnace can vary depending on its brand, how often you use it, your maintenance practices, and simple luck. While unlucky premature failures aren't uncommon, other times, your furnace may last for much longer than you expect.

If you have an older furnace that seems to keep on going, it may still make sense to plan for a replacement. Installing a newer furnace can come with numerous benefits that can easily offset the savings you'll see by pushing your old unit for a few more units. Instead of holding onto the past, check out these three reasons that a newer furnace may be an excellent choice for your household.

1. Higher Efficiency

Newer furnaces are often much more efficient than their old counterparts, resulting in cost savings for homeowners. Furnace manufacturers use AFUE (annual fuel utilization efficiency) to measure how well a furnace can convert fuel to usable heat. This rating tells you the percentage of your fuel usage that goes directly into heating your home, with higher values always being better.

In addition to benefiting from newer efficiency standards and high-efficiency models, older furnaces can also lose efficiency over time. Normal wear and tear, along with an accumulation of dust and debris, can lower the effective operating efficiency of any gas appliance. While thorough maintenance and cleaning may restore some lost efficiency, this extra effort may not be cost-effective on an already aging unit.

2. Better Comfort

Modern furnaces have plenty of options that can increase your home's comfort level in addition to providing heat more efficiently. Most older furnaces are simple, single-stage models. This design means that the burner always runs at full power, and the blower will always push as much air as it can. As a result, you may constantly struggle with too hot or too cold temperatures.

Multi-stage furnaces solve this problem by allowing the burner to operate in high and low modes. The low mode can save energy and maintain temperature levels when your house is already relatively warm, while the high mode can quickly get your home up to your thermostat setpoint.

3. Improved Safety

Cracked heat exchanges are a common failure point on old furnaces. Heat exchangers typically crack due to overheating, but many years of heating and cooling can cause the metal to wear down. A cracked heat exchanger can potentially cause flame rollout in your furnace and lead to harmful combustion gases entering your home.

While carbon monoxide detectors and routine inspections can help you avoid severe trouble, you may not want to chance it with a furnace that's already well beyond its expected lifespan. Proactively installing a new unit will mean gaining all the benefits of a more recent model while improving your home's safety.

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