New Furnace Installation and Replacement in Grove City, Ohio

A dying furnace is not a pretty sight. Actually, it looks fine from the outside, unlike a dying automobile that belches smoke and bleeds rust and has duct tape supporting one of the door handles.

Your current furnace might be fine, even though it’s 20 years old, which is pretty much its expected lifespan. But you might notice things large and small that indicate your furnace is past obsolete.

For instance:

1. Higher energy bills. This might be subtle at first, but in the dead of winter the electricity or gas bill might spike, and you can’t attribute the higher cost to a major change in weather or lifestyle. It very well could be a sign that your furnace is working harder than it used to keep the house warm.
2. The house takes longer and longer to feel warm. It might be a sign of colder temperatures, but it might also be that your main heating source can’t keep up anymore.
3. The furnace shuts off prematurely. This can make the whole house feel cool, and it doesn’t mix the air well, leading to poor indoor air quality.
4. Small repairs add up to a big bill. Lots of little things break down, and it doesn’t seem worth the investment to splurge on a new unit yet. But if the little repairs seem endless, it might be time to bite the bullet.

If you live in Grove City, Ohio, and are thinking about buying a new furnace, it’s best to load up on furnace information before you meet with a heating and cooling expert. That way, you’ll know the right questions to ask, and you can already be aware of your options.

By the end of this article, you’ll have an idea of the types of furnaces on the market and their price ranges. You might even learn a thing or two about the best and worst HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) companies' business practices.

Read more: Why Should I Replace My Furnace When It Works Fine?

Types of Furnaces: Electric and Fuel-Burning

Let’s break down furnace types into two main categories: those that are powered by electricity, and those that are fed by fuel sources.

What Is an Electric Furnace?

It’s essentially a machine that moves air, whether it comes from your heat pump or air conditioner, or heat that is generated by internal electric coils (also called a heating package).

Think of it as a giant hair dryer. When there’s a call for heat from the thermostat, the coils heat up, and a fan then kicks on and pushes the heat through your ductwork.

We’ll touch on furnace efficiency in a bit, but it’s worth noting that electric furnaces are technically 100% efficient. Every dollar of electricity you put into it comes out as heat. The downside is that those heating coils use a lot of electricity.

They are so costly, we usually see them used in homes as emergency (or backup) heat only. That is to say, when the heat pump can’t function due to extreme cold, the thermostat turns on the backup heat. This can also be done manually, but you’ll need to remember to switch it back when the heat pump recovers.

Fuel-burning furnaces can run on natural gas, propane, and even oil

(True story: When I moved into my current house, it had an oil furnace and no air conditioning. Our driveway is long and runs uphill. More than once, the oil truck couldn’t make it up the icy driveway, leaving us without heat for days in the dead of winter.)

In a fuel-burning furnace, the fuel is burned with a precise mix of gas and air, and the flames provide heat, which is blown through the ductwork. This ratio of this mixture needs to be accurate, or your home could be filled with carbon monoxide, an odorless, colorless gas that is toxic.

Natural gas furnaces are popular because the price of the fuel has been historically affordable. Of course, not all homes have easy access to a gas line, but propane is also a viable option.

How Are Furnaces’ Efficiency Rated?

Furnaces are rated on a scale that demonstrates how efficient they are. It’s called annual fuel utilization efficiency (AFUE). You don’t need to learn the technical side of it. What’s important is that an AFUE measures how much of the energy put into the furnace goes toward heating your home.

An 80% furnace converts 80 cents out of every dollar into heat. The other 20% is exhausted from the system as waste. And that percentage of 80 is the minimum AFUE allowed for new furnaces as of 01/01/2015. It’s called “standard efficiency.”

Old furnaces - those 20 years old or older - might be rated as 55 to 78 percent AFUE. We still find furnaces with this low AFUE rating in many houses.

A high-efficiency furnace has an AFUE of 90% or higher. For the technical-minded, it has a secondary heat exchanger that converts exhaust from the first heat exchanger into more heat. Carrier offers a furnace that has an AFUE of 98½, which is the highest rating available.

Next, we look at how much heat is generated, which is categorized by stages

What Type of Furnace Makes the Most Sense in Central Ohio?

A furnace that can operate at multiple stages works only as hard as the temperature dictates. When the thermostat calls for heat, the furnace will first operate in a low stage. This allows the unit to provide long, efficient heating runs. If the thermostat’s heating call continues, the system will ramp up to a higher stage to achieve the need.

What’s the advantage? Sometimes you don’t need 100% of the heat. In the fall or spring, you might need only a little more than half of the heat to make the indoor air comfortable.

It also reduces the number of times your furnace has to start and stop, which is hard on the furnace. The more times it has to start up, the more wear and tear it will suffer. A two-stage furnace will have fewer repairs and should last longer.

Additional benefits include a quieter system (it’s always noisiest when it’s at 100%), and when it’s running at its lower stage, it requires less energy, which can help homeowners save money. Single-stage furnaces can be perfect for some homes, but a two-stage offers advantages.

A single-stage unit has two settings: ON or OFF. It’s either working at 100% of its capacity, or it’s off.

Two-stage furnaces have a secondary heat setting that’s around 60 or 70% of the maximum heating output (measured in BTUs, or British Thermal Units).

The only downside: it costs more than single-stage furnaces.

Modulating furnaces have multiple heating stages, from 100% capacity to as low as around 40%. They modulate between these stages a little bit at a time to provide an even indoor temperature.

If two stages of heating are a noticeable improvement over single-stage in a few areas, the same is true of two stages vs. multiple stages. The same benefits - lower energy bills, increased comfort, and less starting and stopping - will be true here as well.

And, yes, it is the most expensive option of the three.

Read more: Single-Stage, Two-Stage, and Modulating Furnaces: Differences and Benefits

There is one more distinction that needs to be addressed: the blower (or fan) speed.

What Is a Blower Motor?

Whether you have an electric furnace or any one of the fuel-burning models (and even if you have an air handler), it needs a device that blows the heat through the ductwork. It does the same thing in the summer, except that it blows cold air.

Read more: What’s an HVAC Blower Motor & Why Is It Important?

As is the case with furnace stages, there are three varieties of blower motors. The first is the standard, tried-and-true technology of the single speed. For decades and decades, this was the only option. It is the cheapest kind of blower motor and is either operating at 100% or it’s off.

A two-speed is what you’d expect it to be. It has one additional setting below 100%. When it’s running at its slower speed, it is more efficient than the single-stage and can circulate the air in the house better, leading to healthier indoor air.

A variable-speed fan is the fanciest and priciest of options and can solve a lot of comfort concerns.

1. It’s energy-efficient. Even though a variable-speed fan air handler is constantly running, it is usually doing it at a low level. This saves on your energy bill because your system doesn’t have to turn on and off often, and it spends much less time running at the highest level. A variable-speed system can adjust accordingly to use only the power needed to maintain a consistent temperature in your home.
2. It’s quieter. A variable-speed model runs at 100% only when it needs to. Most of the time, it will run at a slower speed, making it quieter. It starts slowly, as well, which reduces its sound.
3. It produces better air quality. Because the fan runs longer, the air is being filtered constantly, which removes impurities. And if you have a whole-house humidifier or dehumidifier, they have more time to condition the air.
4. You get better comfort control. The fan speeds of a variable-speed furnace keep the temperature and humidity even all the time. Instead of being hit with bursts of hot or cold air, conditioned air is delivered consistently.
5. Reliability. The heat exchanger doesn’t expand and contract as much. Every time a single-stage piece of equipment starts, the metal inside expands and then contracts when the furnace shuts off. A variable-speed fan helps to reduce these instances.

Communicating Furnaces: Enter the 21st Century

The latest and greatest technological advances have arrived in the form of a “communicating” HVAC system.

A communicating furnace is one component of the entire HVAC system that works in harmony with every other component.

Once the thermostat and HVAC components are in unison, the components communicate to the thermostat what their capabilities are in terms of heating and cooling capacity and how much air they can move through the system.

Each component sends ongoing data that refines its performance. Sensors allow the thermostat to determine and communicate exactly how much heating or cooling, dehumidification or humidification and airflow are required to keep the home comfortable.

This allows the thermostat to set up optimal performance for both comfort and energy savings.

 It is considered the Cadillac of furnaces, but it comes at a price. It will be the most expensive option, and all of the rest of your HVAC system (thermostat, air conditioner, etc.) will also need to be the communicating type, or the system won’t work.

New Furnace Installation and Replacement in Grove City, Ohio

The exact price of your new system is only something you’ll be able to get with an in-home estimate with one or more HVAC contractors. But we hope this has given you a sense of what to expect in terms of cost so that you can set your budget accordingly if you’re considering a furnace replacement. We also have other resources related to the cost of a new furnace and other furnace topics, such as the guide below.

RELATED: The Complete Guide to Home Furnaces

If you’re in Grove City, Ohio, or the surrounding area, we’d love to have a Fire & Ice sales professional walk you through your options and help you choose the best furnace for you, one that will last the next 15-20 years or more.