High Efficiency Furnaces
Transcript
– I’m Jason Bergstrom with Anytime Heating, Cooling, and Plumbing, and today we’re going to talk about different types of gas furnaces.
– What we have right here is a high efficient gas furnace and you can recognize this by the venting is in a PVC pipe.
– Your standard 80% gas furnaces are vented always in a metal pipe.
– That’s, traditionally, about the two types of furnaces that there are out there.
– The reason why this is vented in PVC pipe is because it’s a high efficient furnace and it actually condensates.
– There’s condensation that runs down the PVC pipe, back into the furnace, and then gets drained out.
– This particular furnace is 98% efficient, which means that if you put a hundred dollars worth of gas in it, you get ninety-eight dollars worth of heat out of it.
– A standard efficient furnace is 80%.
– So, any furnace that you see venting with a metal vent pipe is going to be an 80%.
– There’s a little bit more costs up front in the investment of the equipment.
– You’re going to pay more money for a high efficient furnace, but over a longer period of time it pays itself back.
– One of the main problems that we find on service calls is with drain lines.
– A lot of times drain lines can clog.
– When they clog, they can overflow with water, which can cause damage to your home.
– Simple maintenance plan, that’s part of what we do on a maintenance, is clean the drains – one of the things – but it’s very important to do that.
– So, in this instance, this furnace is in a drain pan.
– The drain pan has a safety switch.
– It’s located in a basement.
– There’s not as much risk to damage anything.
– But, what generally happens is the drain drains into a pump.
– The pump will then have a safety switch wired.
-If that pump was to ever fail, then the safety switch on the pump will shut the system off.
– If you have a system with a condensate pump, you want to make sure that the safety switch is wired.
– If that safety switch is not wired and the pump was to fail, you could flood your basement.
– So, we set up these particular systems with pumps with safety switches.
– If the pump’s to fail, it will shut off the system – preventing any damage.
– If for some reason the system was ever to freeze up, it’s in a drain pan and drain pan has a safety switch.
– If there’s ever water in the drain pan, it will shut the system off.
– If you have a problem – you wake up one morning and it’s in the wintertime and your heat is not running and the system’s not working, or you come home from work in the afternoon and it’s in the summertime and the house is hot, you have no air conditioning, first thing that we suggest everybody check is the filter.
– Dirty filter will cause problems.
– The furnace can over heat and air conditioner can actually freeze up, get too cold.
– Another thing to check is breakers.
– Make sure that your breakers are on.
– Go to the panel make sure your breaker’s on for the air conditioner.
– Make sure your breakers on for the furnace.
– Make sure that the doors are intact.
– Just simply taking this door off, there are safety switches that can shut the system off.
– So, if you’ve been around the furnace, been in the room working, moving boxes, that’s one of the things that you all, that you do want to check, before you call a professional like us.
– If you’ve checked your breakers and you’ve checked these other items and you don’t see a problem, those are the simple things that you can check.
– If you found no issues with those, then it’s time to call a professional, like Anytime.