Home Furnaces

[rScotty]

I'm needing to replace a 70K BTU home furnace. Natural gas. The old one is a single speed type, but it is getting close to 20 years old. No need for AC in Colorado foothills.

I see various types of gas furnaces - single speed, dual speed, variable speed and also the modulated (variable) flame type.

Not too worried about price, and frankly natural gas is cheap. I'm leaning toward wanting it to run quiet and last reasonably well. Most of the modern ones seem pretty efficient at 90% AFUE or better.
But I don't know anything about what brands are out there.

Any recommendations?

rScotty

 

[KennyG]

I suggest you find a really good installer and go with the brand he uses. That said I recently had a pair of residential Heil units installed and was impressed. I think they were 95% multi speed units. They are almost silent.

 

[rScotty]

Thanks. This should be a simple replacement. It's an old small rental house we've had for years.

Access to the furnace is good - it sits in the middle of a basement, and the ducting is good.
The bid I got from an inspection agent for the installer was for a bottom of the line 70,000 BTW natural gas Lennox single speed furnace installed - $9500. Seems high... or maybe I am just old fasiioned.

At my age, I am trying to stop being a long time do-it-yoursefer, I've just never had anything to do with appliance installers but I like your advice to shop installers, not heaters.

The Heil sounds about right. Why a pair? Two houses?

 

[ronjhall]

I had 2 stage variable speed fan 90 % 70k BTU. American standard. Replaced it after 23 years with a Lennox with same spec’s plus 96% + . I like the how quite it is running on the 38k BTU stage. It will run on circulate mode for about 35% of each hour. This mode just circulate air without heat. Need a thermostat that will make use of all the features of these multi-stage and variable speed furnaces.
I have a Honeywell for this.
My choice for a furnace is American Standard or Trane.

 

[KennyG]

The Heil sounds about right. Why a pair? Two houses?

This was for my church. We had two air conditioning units fail so we decided to replace the air handlers with residential type furnaces to transition away from an ancient hot water heating system. The units are in enclosed overhead spaces (drywalled but no sound deadening insulation) and no one can tell if they are running or not, even during silent prayer.

The units are 100K BTU 97% efficient with 25 speed fans. Not quite sure how that works and why it's different from variable speed. The cost of the units (with air conditioning) installed was about $15,000 each. This included duct modification, addition of intake and exhaust piping, condensate drains with pumps and alarms and new thermostats.

It took another $5,000 plus to get natural gas to the furnaces because of the nature of the church construction and location.

 

[fishin coyote]

9500 for a bottom tier unit is highway robbery. Now pricing may be higher in your area vs my area in NW Pa.but it shouldn’t be that much. I have contractors here installing 90%+ gas units in the 6500 range.