Air Conditioning Tune-Up Time in Fort Wayne

Hot Days on the Way

Hey Fort Wayne, is your air conditioning ready? You’ve had a small taste of the dog days of summer early this year but in just a few short weeks it will hit for real. How about a tune up for your air conditioning system to make sure it’s operating at it’s peak performance. Our network HVAC contractor has a special going to do just that, so make a  referral request and we’ll the two of you together… you’ll thank me in July.

Is Your Home’s Gas Furnace Efficient?

High home heating bills – they’re an unfortunate but common reality for Minneapolis residents each winter.

With a rise in natural gas costs playing the role of the villain, an inefficient gas furnace is a worthy collaborator, costing some homeowners as much as 40% in additional heating costs. With older furnaces, heat can be wasted through the exhaust. This makes the furnace itself warm, but leaves it unable to produce usable heat.

But just how do you know if it’s time to replace your current unit with a new, more energy-efficient gas furnace?

The efficiency of a gas furnace is measured by Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency (AFUE). Essentially, it measures the amount of heat delivered to your home in comparison to the amount of fuel that must be supplied to the furnace. If your gas furnace is more than 15 years old, your furnace’s AFUE may be 60-70%, meaning as much as 30-40% of every dollar you spend on fuel could be wasted.

Newer, more efficient gas furnaces can have an AFUE of as much as 95% or more. That means the gas furnace can convert as much as 95% of the fuel you’re paying for into usable heat for your home. Energy-efficient models, including Trane 95 gas furnaces, have even been show to deliver up to 96.7% efficiency.

Throughout 2010, federal tax credits of up to $1,500 are available for new energy-efficient equipment installed in existing homes, including natural gas furnaces. To take advantage, pay special attention to the SEER and AFUE rating required to qualify for the credit.

Of course, only a home heating expert can give you a definitive answer regarding whether it’s time to replace your current gas furnace, for either efficiency or safety reasons.

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Heating Equipment: Should You Repair or Replace?

It happens eventually in every home. On a particularly frigid morning, you wake up and crank the thermostat just like usual, but there’s no response: No comforting sound of the system firing up and no warmth rising from the air vents or radiators. Hopefully it’s a simple problem that’s a quick and inexpensive fix, like a tripped circuit breaker or a clogged filter. But occasionally the repair is so big and costly that it raises an age-old question that’s been asked about everything from station wagons to vacuum cleaners: Is it more cost effective to fix what you have or replace it? Here’s how to decide.

Think safety first
If the problem presents a safety hazard, replacement is a no-brainer. For example, if your furnace has a cracked heat exchanger—the metal wall between the burning fuel and the air it’s heating—poisonous carbon monoxide gas could work its way into the household air supply, something you don’t want to risk. Other problems, like faulty electronics and stuck valves, can be repaired, which means you’ll need to do a cost-benefit analysis.

Consider the typical lifespan
A 2007 study by the National Association of Home Builders and Bank of America found that furnaces for forced-air systems last an average of 15 to 20 years; boilers for hot-water radiators and baseboards last 13 to 21 years. So start by dating your system. Some technicians write the year the equipment was installed directly on the unit. Otherwise, when the machine is off and cool, look for a metal identification plate, usually on the inside of chamber door. Record the model and serial numbers from the plate, then call the manufacturer’s customer service number to get the date of manufacture.

Keep in mind that a 25- or even 30-year-old system isn’t necessarily ready for the scrap heap. The published lifespans are averages, which means half of all systems are spent by that time, and the other half are still working well. Use these numbers as ballpark guidelines only, suggests Gopal Ahluwalia, the NAHB study’s lead researcher.

Assess the costs of repairing versus replacing
To decide your system’s fate, you need more data: the cost of your repair or replacement options, which your service provider can give you. Depending on the size of your house and the brand of new equipment you choose, a new hot-air furnace typically costs $1,500 to $4,000, while a boiler for a hot-water system might run $4,000 to $8,000.

As a general guideline, consider replacement if the equipment is beyond three-quarters of its life expectancy and repairs will cost more than a third of replacement, suggests Larry Howald of Broad Ripple Heating and Air Conditioning in Indianapolis. In other words, it’s probably not worth spending $700 to repair a 15-year-old furnace you could replace for $2,000.

Consider your heating plant’s efficiency
In these days of high fuel costs and concerns over our carbon footprints, you should also consider your heating plant’s efficiency. Its Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency number (AFUE) measures the percentage of the fuel that’s converted to heat rather than being lost up the chimney or through other inefficiencies.

“If your system is 20 years old, its AFUE is probably about 70%,” says Greg Gill of Action Air Conditioning and Heating in San Marcos, California. Today’s minimum AFUE is 80%, which means you’ll burn 10% less fuel—and therefore spend 10% less money on your heating bills. You can go as high a 95% AFUE with new equipment, dropping your bills a whopping 25%. That kind of efficiency raises your equipment costs to $3,500 to $6,000 for a furnace and $8,000 to $10,000 for a boiler, but will also earn you a 30% tax credit (up to $1,500) from the federal government. And there are many local tax incentives and manufacturers’ rebates for super-efficient systems, too.

“It’s definitely worth doing the math to see if the high-efficiency model will pay for itself,” Gill says. According to Energy Star, upgrading to more efficient HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) equipment can cut heating and cooling costs by about 20%, or $200 a year on average, which means you could recoup the extra investment in as little as five years.

Article by Oliver Marks