Furnace

[ralphmelton]

The furnace is installed and working now. All credit goes to Lori's father; I mostly stood around and said 'I'd be happy to help...' I did participate in bleeding the air from the radiators, though, and I'll be doing that more in the days to come.

One more statistic about the change in furnaces: the new furnace consumes 114,000 BTUs (per hour? I remember the number, but not the exact units), and puts 104,000 BTUs into the house. The old furnace consumed 183,000 BTUs, and Les estimated it at about 60% efficiency. So for about the same amount of heat being produced, we're using 38% less gas in that furnace. Given that gas prices are supposed to go up, the furnace might pay for itself in one winter, almost certainly in two.

Comments

[wtimmins.livejournal.com]

Woohoo! Good to hear, man. Saving on bills definitely cool.

And reliable heat. mmmm.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

The heat was generally reliable, but Lori's father was very worried that the furnace might not be burning clean, and carbon monoxide is not our friend.

[echoweaver.livejournal.com]

I recall that my father was passionate about high-efficiency furnaces when we were house-hunting in my youth. Very high-efficiency furnaces were attainable and on the market, but almost no home-builder was willing to pay the premium. Therefore, people bought homes with 60% furnaces, when 95% was readily available and affordable, without really knowing that this was something they should care about.

I internalized all this, but didn't ask about the effeciency of the furnaces in our home when we bought it anyway. We just fell in love with the house and didn't care. I think the effeciency of our furnaces is probably very poor. Then again, the windows aren't well-sealed either *sigh*. Well, windows first, and if the furnace ever needs replacing, we'll check it out then.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Our windows aren't very good at insulating either, but they're not producing carbon monoxide. Perhaps in 2005 we'll replace them.

[cellio]

Wow, what savings! Now I'm curious about how (in)efficient our furnace is. (Um, it's a furnace. It came with the house. It's neither new nor decrepit. Thus concludes my knowledge of furnaces. :-) )

You don't have to do all the windows at once, unlike a furnace. We did about half of ours last year and will probably do most of the rest next year. (This year is exterior-painting year.)

We like the people who did our windows, so if you want a recommendation when the time comes, let me know. I've used them twice (once in the previous house).

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

2004 is an exterior-painting year for us, too.