Furnace Efficiency

[amarpreet]

I have recently bought a house (870 sq.ft),1985 built. It is equipped with keeprite furnace as old as house. Being a rookie from other country , where no furnace heating is required, I have no experience. All is working well, but for my own knowledge I wanted to know if this house is insulated well. I have kept the indoor temperature @ 19 degrees. The outdoor temp. now a day is -15 degrees and with the wind chill -25 degrees. The furnace once reaching to set temp., restarts after every 15 minutes, keeps running for 7-8 minutes. I dont know if this is fair enough effeciancy of the house and furnace. Thanks for your advice in advance.

[Grady]

If the exhaust pipe on the furnace is white plastic the furnace is at least 90% efficient. If the exhaust pipe is metal, the furnace is only in the 80% range.

Look in the attic for insulation, measure the thickness & post the thickness & type of insulation and we should be able to give you an 'R' value. If the house is over a crawl space or unheated basement, check also the insulation under the floor.

[amarpreet]

Thanks for responding!! The insulation in the attic is spray foam type with a thickness of +1'-0". The exhaust pipe of the furnance is metal. The basement/lower level of my bi-level house is fully furnished with flooring as slab on grade.
Hope you would be able to tell me the R value with this.

Thanks in advance

[ecman51]

Foam? Where are you located?

I am not familiar with spray foam used for attics. I know it is done for walls, but never heard of it for ceilings, perhaps due to a weight factor?

But foam will have a far higher insulated rating than fiberglass, which would be R-38, if you had a foot of that. I would not doubt you are around 50, give or take some.

[amarpreet]

It is actually blown -in insulation, Sorry about my no or less knowledge.

[ecman51]

One foot of that real loose white fluffy fiberglass that does not itch, would not be as good as 1 foot of cellulose. So you really need to know what you have.