9 months ago, I put my entire life savings into the down payment for a
home (built in 1955) in the Oakland Hills (northern california)

My fiancé and I recently found out that our monstrous 50 year old 255K
BTU furnace (70% efficiency in its day) has cracks in 4 out of 6 of
the heat exchangers and was emitting carbon monoxide (yikes!). They
no longer make residential furnaces of that size, so deciding how to
replace it has been an exercise in frustration and confusion. We have
gotten 5 separate estimates, all providing vastly different opinions as
to what should be done to replace our furnace and adequately and most
efficiently heat our home. How is one to know who to trust and
believe? My head is spinning from all of the different advice we've
been given (which I'll detail further down in this post)

To complicate things further, our home was custom built by the previous
owner, and has a very unique open floor plan on the upstairs level,
which constitutes about 2600 sq feet of the home. There are 11
registers and 2 large returns on the upstairs level (although both my
office and our dining room have NO registers and we've been told they
can't be added). The downstairs level accounts for approximately 600
square feet and contains our family room (which has a single register
in it)and a guest bedroom with no registers in it.

The entire length of the house, on both levels, has floor to ceiling
windows facing south that provide a breathtaking panoramic view of the
bay. However, they are older windows, with metal frames, and are very
inefficient -- the house loses a lot of heat when it is cold through
those windows, yet when the sun is out the vast southern exposure beams
through the house, heating it sometimes to the point where I literally
feel like a dog locked in a car on a hot summer day. We are in the
hills, and it can get windy, meaning it can get super cold at night.
Yet when the sun is shining, it actually heats up to the point that by
mid-afternoon I'm opening windows because it's too warm -- even in
November (although once the rainy season starts it will be cold all the
time -- I know this from our first month in the house, last February,
wherein we got a $550 PG&E bill that almost gave me a heart attack...
-- after that I had tried not running the heat, but even with wool
sweaters my fingers were still too cold to type and you can't operate a
touchpad with gloves on..)

We have a home warranty, which should cover the cost of replacing the
furnace, although it turns out that the list of uncovered items is much
larger than what is covered.. The home warranty sent out Company A to
provide an estimate for the furnace replacement. They came back with
the suggestion of replacing our 70% efficient 255K BTU furnace with an
80% 100K BTU furnace to the tune of $6300, $2100 of which we would have
to pay out of pocket. As we were shocked both by the price, and by the
size of the unit they were suggesting (how could this adequately heat
our home?), I did a little researching on the Better Business Bureau
website and found Company A had several unresolved complaints filed
against them. Not good.

I decided to get some estimates of my own, and had 3 separate
companies come out to the house. Companies B & C each suggested
getting a single 80% efficiency 155K BTU unit. However, we were
concerned whether even this would provide adequate heating AND we were
informed both by the home warranty company and by Company E (who
provided estimate number 5 as a 2nd opinion on behalf of the home
warranty company) that it is illegal to install a furnace larger than
125K BTU in a residential home in California. Is this true? If so,
I'm even more bewildered as to who to trust, as Company C is Sears - a
brand I thought was highly reputable.

Then there was Company D, which is a member of the BBB, has no
complaints filed against them, and is also an authorized installer for
Home Depot. This company provided the most thorough examination of our
home and took into account the materials it was made of, the layout,
and all of the windows, in addition to the square footage, in making
their recommedation. They suggested getting two seperate 80% efficient
100K BTU furnaces and using a "twinning kit" to make the units operate
as one, providing a total of 200K BTU to heat the home. In addition to
seem the most knowledgable of the contractors thus far, they also had
worked with our home warranty company in the past (and is only no
longer on the list of approved contractors b/c they didn't send their
latest proof of insurance over, which they are now doing so that we
might be able to have the home warranty company authorize their doing
the repairs)

When we called the home warranty company and told them of Company D's
recommendations, the home warranty rep who answered told us that
twinning is not a proper furnace installation, and could actually cause
our home to blow up! The home warranty company said they wanted to
send another company out of their choice for a 2nd opinion (the
abovementioned Company E).

When Company E showed up, they told us they would recommend putting in
two 80% efficient 90K BTU units -- that were twinned! We told them
what the home warranty company said about twinning, and they said that
was inaccurate and that they did twinning systems all the time and it
was the only way to heat a home of our size, and that the same home
warranty company had previously authorized such repairs in the past.

Yet when we next spoke with the home warranty company, we found out
that Company E had actually sent in a completely different job estimate
to them, with recommendations of a zoned system with a single 125K 80%
efficient BTU unit for the upstairs, and a 75K 80% eff. unit for the
downstairs. As such, there would be extensive ductwork modification
that would need to be done to zone the system, leaving us with almost
$2900 in uncovered costs.

(thanks for your patience if you're still reading this far!)

By this point I felt like my head was spinning, and could not
understand why the contractor who came to our home would tell us they
would be installing 2 twinned 90K BTU units, only to then send an
estimate to the home warranty company for an entirely different job.
The home warranty rep suggested I call Copmany E and ask why there was
a discrepancy between what they'd told us and what they told the home
warranty company, and to explain why they'd want to do a zoned system
over a twinned system.

I'm already beyond 'house poor', so if I'm going to be spending this
much money I want to know that the job will be done right, that the
house won't "blow up", and that we will actually have enough heat for
our home (particularly the upstairs level)

So I called Company E, and was told that the estimater said he thought
it would be more efficient to do the zoned system. When I expressed my
concern as to whether the single 125k BTU unit could really heat the
2600 sq foot open floor plan windows everywhere upstairs of the house,
which had 11 registers, not to mention the fact that the downstairs
level only has a single register and no returns I was told they'd have
to call the guy who did the estimate and then get back to me. They
later called me back and said "Yeah, he said you could do it as
twinned". I then asked why did he submit it as being a zoned system to
the home warranty company, to which I didn't really get an adequate
response. I also could not get an adequate answer over which would
actually be the better choice for my home, but that if I went with the
twinning it would only save me $235 for the install of a second
thermostat (how can that be? wouldn't all the extra ductwork
modification needed for zoning drop the price down if the system were
twinned?)

I am looking to cut costs b/c I'm pretty broke right now, but not at
the expense of safety, comfort level, or decreasing the value of the
house by not getting the right furnace installed. Meanwhile we have no
heat, and I've no idea which (if any) of these contractors I can trust.


This is my first home, and I've been told by numerous friends who have
been homeowners for far longer that it is *very* difficult to find a
good HVAC contractor - and of course, no one had any they could
recommend. I feel like I just don't have enough information to
possibly make a decision as to whether to go with a twinned system, or
a zoned system, which contractor to choose, etc.

I literally am desperate for some advice from those who are more
knowledgable regarding heating issues. TIA for the help, and also for
having gotten this far in my huge rambling anxious post!!!