We Have Heat!!!

Wonderful, glorious heat! And our new furnace is so quiet, we can hardly hear it. It's amazing!

First of all, for Beth, I forgot to take a "before" picture of the laundry room, but here is the pile of stuff that used to be on or under the ironing board. I almost moved the ironing pile also, but decided to take the high road and actually spent about an hour ironing on Thursday! I had to explain what ironing was to Little Man because he'd never seen me do it before. :-) Now that the ironing board is cleared off I might actually iron more often!



After much banging and pounding down there, they got the old furnace out. It was a behemoth, original to the house, and only 60% efficient. I was so impressed with the workmen, they cleaned up the area really well before they placed the new furnace here.



Here is the new furnace in place. See how much smaller it is? You can see the new air filter case down on the floor to the left of the furnace.


We got a new humidifier too (our old one stopped working), and they decided to put that around on the side.


Ta da!! New furnace, air filter, and humidifier. Aren't they purdy??!! Down on the right, that little splash of red is our new condensation pump. It pumps condensation from our furnace, humidifier, and hot water heater up through a hose and over to our laundry tub.


Most of you may want to stop reading right here, but for those of you that want the particulars.....

We got a 95% efficiency Amana furnace with a DC motor. Right now 95% efficiency furnaces (all brands) are eligible for a 30% tax credit, so that is a happy thing. I learned that most furnaces use AC motors to run the fan. A DC motor uses much less power so over time it saves alot on your electric bill. A DC motor also means that the furnace is 2-stage. It fires up one stage for 5 minutes or so, and if after that time more heat is still being asked for, it will fire up the second stage and burn both stages (or heat exchangers) until the temperature on the thermostat is reached. This 2 stage method saves on gas costs because alot of the time in the fall and spring your house just needs a little "shot in the arm" to get it back up to temperature, it doesn't always need the power of the entire furnace.

I also learned that you can tell the quality of furnace by the details of the warranty. I guess I already knew this in general terms, but it certainly made sense when we looked at the warranties for all the different furnaces we were shown. If it has a lifetime warranty on the heat exchanger and a 10 year warranty on all other furnace parts, that is a pretty good furnace.

Of the furnaces we looked at and were quoted, the Bryant Evolution series was the top of the line. That is a 95% efficiency, two stage furnace with smart technology in it that talks directly to the thermostat. But it requires a $300 thermostat with the same smart technology in it so it can talk back to the furnace. That whole set up was $1300 more than what we ended up getting. Our new furnace, both stages, can be controlled with the thermostat we already had. We feel we got a very good furnace for a good price, and we are so, so, so, so grateful to our friends for their loan so we could get it!

I am delighting to wake up in a warm house!!