View Single Post
  #61   Report Post  
Posted to alt.home.repair,alt.hvac
Steve[_24_] Steve[_24_] is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 111
Default New gas furnace/AC recommendations?


"Home Guy" wrote in message ...
wrote:

The new furnace is a multispeed brushless DC motor


They are a heck of a lot more efficient than a crappy split cap
induction motor!!


Sometimes durability and longevity trumps efficiency.

Even if electric heat (on a per-therm basis) is twice the cost of
natural gas, that extra energy used by a PSC motor is beneficially used
by my house in the winter, and my PSC fan is running only maybe 25 to
33% of the time, not 100% of the time. In the summer, when my fan is
running more often, it's running at full speed - something that I would
also ask an ECM motor to do, and for which the ECM motor does not have
as much of an efficiency advantage over a PSC motor.

So I'll pay the net $100 a year in additional energy cost and never have
to worry about my PSC motor failing me for several decades - if ever.

Even after gov't rebates, forking out a minimum $2000 for a new furnace
is going to take years to recover that, with the ECM motor delivering
just $100 a year and the burners / heat-exchanger *maybe* giving me an
additional $200 a year in savings. And by the time I've made those
savings the furnace will be near the end of it's reliable life-span.


So your saying that the "reliable life span" of the new furnaces is only 6 -
7 years?? This may be true when installed by John Q Homeowner, or the lowest
bidder, however when correctly installed, properly adjusted, and with
correctly sized ductwork, the normal lifespan is 20 - 23 years.

You still cannot buy a new furnace today that *DOESN"T* have electronics
controling it. Furnaces with PSC motors are still available, but only in the
cheapest, lowest efficiency, "builder grade" models.

Maybe thats why your so against the new furnaces... your got the cheapest
POS furnace you could find, you got what you paid for, and now your not
happy with it.