Is it time for a furnace upgrade in your San Joaquin Valley home? If your furnace or your heating bills gave you trouble last year, it may be time to consider a high-efficiency furnace upgrade. When shopping for your furnace upgrade, make sure you consider advanced energy-saving features.
Up to 30 percent of your energy costs for heating your home can be wasted if you have an older, less energy-efficient furnace. Most of the waste is in the form of exhaust gases that carry heat energy out of the house. High-efficiency furnaces are designed to reduce this waste to less than 10 percent of the overall fuel burned for heat.
Three features you’ll see in high-efficiency furnaces include:
- A two-stage gas valve. In a traditional furnace, the gas flow goes at full blast the entire time the furnace is generating hot air. With a two-stage gas valve, the gas flow starts off at a high rate to quickly heat your home. When it’s time to just maintain the heat, the gas valve drops back to a lower, less costly gas flow.
- A variable-speed blower motor. Working on the same concept as the two-stage gas valve, a variable speed blower motor heats up your house by blowing hot air at full force. It drops back to a lower, quieter, more continuous speed once the house is warmed up. This uses less energy and provides more even heating.
- A second heat exchanger. A traditional furnace puts out exhaust gases as a by-product of combustion. These are typically vented outside of your house because they’re unhealthy to breathe. Since they have been heated by your furnace, they’re essentially wasted energy. A second heat exchanger captures these gases and pulls the heat from them, turning them into condensate water that gets drained away. Very little energy is lost when your furnace has a second heat exchanger.
For more information on a high-efficiency furnace upgrade or any other HVAC matters, please contact us at Donald P. Dick Air Conditioning.We have proudly served the Fresno area since 1970.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in the greater Fresno, California area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about a furnace upgrade and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
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