When you choose a furnace for your home, you might feel tempted to shy away from the sticker cost of a furnace. If this is the case, you will likely opt for the least expensive option that you can find. This would be a mistake because it could leave you on the hook for higher costs down the road. Although you will pay more initially, you will save money in the long run if you buy a modulating, condensing furnace for your home.
What Does Modulating Mean?
A modulating furnace has a variable speed motor and the ability to adjust how much heat it produces. A conventional furnace will only have one or two outputs. This means that when there is a need for heating, your furnace will come on at full blast, run until your home reaches the desired temperature, and then shut off. This is analogous to gunning your car between stoplights. In other words, it it a recipe for poor fuel efficiency. A modulating furnace can adjust its output so that it maintains a more consistent temperature inside your home. This will require your furnace to run at lower outputs for longer periods of time. As a result, you will use less gas, just like you use less gas when you maintain the same speed in your car.
What Does a Condensing Furnace Do?
A conventional furnace uses a single heat exchanger to extract heat from the super-heated gases produced by burning fuel in the combustion chamber of your furnace. This is problematic because a conventional furnace must leave enough heat in the gases so that they can escape your home by rising up a vent pipe. A condensing furnace will have a second heat exchanger that allows it to extract so much heat from the gases that they condense to a liquid. Condensing furnaces require a drain to direct this exhaust fluid from your home, but even if you have to install a drain in your home, a condensing furnace is worth the cost because it will allow you to achieve efficiency ratings of up to 98%.
As long as your financing costs for your new furnace do not total more than what you save by improving the efficiency of your furnace, installing a condensing furnace represents a net gain. If you want to know if a modulating, condensing furnace could work for you, you should talk to an HVAC company like Advanced Heating & Cooling.
Share