DIYbanter - View Single Post - Has anyone ever replaced their conventional furnace fan motor with anECM motor?

HVAC Guy

wrote:

If you made a product that deliberately lasted 10 years, while it
could last 20, it wouldn't be long before a competitor whose
product did last 20 would start eating your market share because
their product was superior. That's how free markets work.

The problem is that nothing purchased by *anybody* will be kept for 20
years. That time-frame is too long.

It doesn't matter if it's a car, or roofing shingles, or furnaces, or
cell phones or TV's.

Once you get beyond 5 years, it's irrelevant if you could design it to
last 10 years or 20 years. It won't matter.

Most home owners putting a new furnace in a house today will not be
the same people living in the same house 10 years from now when the
furnace breaks down.

The HVAC industry is, and has been, working toward a goal of making
sure that just as each owner of a given house will probably have to
replace the roof once during the ownership of the house, he will also
have to replace the furnace too.

That is a different situation compared to 20 or 30 years ago, when the
original furnace installed in a new house back in 1965 - 1980 would
easily last 30+ years and the house would pass through the hands of 3
or 4 owners without needing a new furnace.

The typical funace lasts 20 years.

My parent's house was built in 1955 and they replaced it's original
forced-air natural gas furnace about 5 years ago. That's 45 years
with the same furnace.

My house was built in 1976 and has it's original natural gas furnace.
That's 32 years and counting.

The typical funace lasts 20 years.

So the HVAC industry is on target at reducing furnace lifespan down to
the time frame of the average length of home-ownership - about 7
years. Good for them.

Given the cost, that seems a reasonable lifespan.

It's a waste of energy and resources for an industry to design such a
product with an intentionally short lifespan. It runs counter to the
national interests on such scales as energy usage (to build it in the
first place) and environmental impact when it's taken to the landfill
when it's discarded.

You could make the same argument for other items, like wiring,
plumbing, fixtures, the bricks and 2x4 studs in the walls. Why do
they need to last 50+ years? Why not design the entire house and
every structural and functional element inside it so that it only
lasts 10 to 15 years? After all, I'm not going to live in the house
for more than 10 years - right?

And then watch the landfills get filled up when all those houses get
torn down and rebuilt every 15 or 20 years. That makes real good
sense - doesn't it?

How many customers would be willing to pay say 30% more for
one that lasted another 5 years? Or 50% more for one
that lasted another 10?

That's the crock - that thinking that it costs so much more to make it
last another 5 or 10 years.

It's the electronic items that fail and become absurdly (criminally)
expensive to fix that forces the removal of a furnace - not because
it's suffered an irreparable structural or mechanical failure. And as
home owners become dumber and dumber about how things work or how to
fix things for themselves, they will be at the mercy of contractors
and repair men.

Given that the energy situation and technology is
constantly evolving,

There's very little new in furnace design that wasn't known 50 years
ago. There is no constant evolution (at least not in North America).
In Japan, they have furnaces with built-in 1 kw electric generators to
provide some electrical co-generation that can supplement the
electricity supply for the house - and keep the blower running in the
case of complete power outages (like what's happening to thousands in
the central USA right now).