Increasing the Efficiency of Your Home

If you are serious about saving money on your heating bills you may want to buy a more efficient furnace. Through improved designs and modern innovations, furnaces have been designed so that more of the heat that is released from burning your fuel goes into heating your house.

How much will it cost?

When you're buying a new car you can refer to "Blue Book" value to determine how much the car should cost. The closest thing to the Blue Book in the heating industry is the Furnace Price Report published by FurnaceCompare.com. Once you have a sense of what your furnace will cost, you can determine the furnace's payback period.

How is furnace efficiency measured?

A furnace will not produce heat at a constant rate all year long. Just as your car’s fuel consumption varies, so does that of your furnace. By dividing the total amount of fuel burned in a furnace in one year by the total heat produced, you can get a pretty accurate view of how efficient a furnace is. This method of measuring furnace fuel efficiency is known as AFUE, or Annualized Fuel Utilization Efficiency. An AFUE of 100% means that all the potential heat in your fuel goes directly into heating your home.

If you notice the Energy Star logo, which is controlled by the Government, on a furnace, that is your guarantee that you should be getting 90% efficiency from the furnace.

What affects the efficiency of a furnace?

You can expect that the older a furnace is, the less efficient it will be. Furnaces from around 1980 will today have typical AFUE’s of about 50-60%. This means that almost half of the heat produced is being wasted. Furnaces from 1990 or later will be far more efficient and you can expect AFUE’s of close to 80%. Brand new furnaces today can have AFUE’s of 95% or higher.

How large a furnace do I need?

Many factors impact the capacity of furnace that you need: everything from the size of your house, to the amount of insulation, the amount of shade, the quality of your windows and more. Not only is sizing a furnace complex, it's also important. If you buy too large of a furnace it will cycle on and off more often than necessary, dramatically decreasing its efficiency. For this reason, make sure that you hire a heating contractor to perform a heat load calculation.

Furnace Installation

A permit is required to install or change a furnace. There are strict requirements on how the replacement or installation is performed. It is highly advisable that you do not attempt this by yourself; get a qualified contractor to do so for you.

More Resources

Furnace Price Report

EnergyStar