trader_4 wrote:
....
I'd be happy to see data that supports that. There are a lot of people
with fuel bills of $1500 a year. If they save 20%, that's $300 a year.
In ten years, it's $3000, about 50% more than the cost of the furnace
equipment to begin with. I replaced my 27 year old nat gas furnace
4 years ago and have been saving 40%+, Ed reports similar with a boiler.
I'm saving about $300 a year. The most costly repair, would be the
heat exchanger. All the systems I looked at, the heat exchanger was
either warranted for 20 years, lifetime, etc. Not saying you won't
have to put some money into an aging furnace, or that a high efficiency
one doesn't have more parts that can fail, just that I haven't seen
any real data to support that it's going to wipe out staying with a lower efficiency furnace.

our experience was that within 12 years the heat-exchanger
went and even while the company did replace it we still had
to spend quite a bit of money to do that. we also had a lot
of problems from the ignition system. whatever part it was
they were getting was coming from Mexico and it failed each
year. finally we asked them to find something else and it
hasn't been any trouble since.

our heat costs run between $600-1200/yr on propane (normally
the thermostat is set at 58-60F). i think our unit is rated
at 95% or so. 98% would have cost us about $500 more when we
replaced the exchanger. we've also had to replace the fan.

i sure wish this place had been set up for more passive
solar as right now this mid-winter cold day the sun is shining
nicely and we could be avoiding some of the expense of heating
(for hot water too).


songbird