In the next few months, a lot of you will be faced with the need to select a new gas furnace and will find the decision making process confusing between the different models. There are many different manufacturers of gas furnaces today, but there are really just a few different models available from all of them and with a little understanding of the marketplace, the choices should be easy.
There are two different efficiency categories of furnaces, and three distinct types of furnaces regardless of brand. The two different efficiencies of furnaces are 80% afue and 90%+ afue. AFUE is an abbreviation for annual fuel utilization efficiency and it is simply a measurement of how much gas consumed by you furnace actually heats your house and how much goes up the chimney as waste. An 80% afue furnace uses 80 cents of a dollar of gas to heat and a 90%+ uses 90 cents to heat , wasting only 10 cents on the dollar. There are some furnaces that use all the way up to 96.7 cents of a dollar to heat and only waste 2.3 cents of gas consumed.
The three types of furnaces are single stage, two stage and two stage variable speed and these are available in both efficiency categories.
The single stage furnace puts out the same amount of heat when it is on regardless of how cold it is outside. It is either on or off and since the furnace in your home has to be large enough to heat you on the coldest day of the year, it is over sized on all the other moderate days we have here in the Atlanta area.
The two stage furnaces take care of this on or off problem by slowing down on a moderate day to give you just the right amount of heat and speeding up on a real cold day to keep you warm and comfortable. The variable speed furnaces takes this comfort feature further by using a D/C powered variable speed fan motor to provide different settings of heat and airflow to keep your temperature even and consistent all season long.
The variable speed furnaces also save $230 to $240 a year in electrical consumption from the fan motor over and above a single stage or two stage model which use A/C powered fan motors. A variable speed furnace also has the ability to remove 15 to 20 percent more moisture from the air in the summer when coupled with a special thermostat that measures humidity levels and adjust the fan speed of the furnace to make it drier in your home than you have ever experienced before.
All today’s furnaces have no pilot light, are induced draft and are all much more efficient in gas consumption than any old model you have in you home and with the ever raising cost of gas, you should consider replacing your furnace with a new high efficiency model today to start saving. Old furnaces waste up to 50 to 60 percent of all gas consumed and with gas soon approaching $2.00 a therm, you can’t afford not to upgrade.
