Getting a new Furnace
 

Hey all. So I had my energy audit done on my new house, and one of the items that needs to get done is replace my 25 year old furnace. I had a few guys come out and give me quotes and I'm stuck on 2 companies. One just sells Bryant furnaces, and the other sells both Bryant and Lennox. They're both giving me the same price for furnace, but one is for the Bryant 987M 80K BTU modulating furnace and the other is the Lennox EL296V 90K BTU 2 stage furnace. I've emailed both companies and am waiting on an answer about "what the lowest output BTU is" for both furnaces. Daox was saying that most of these newer furnaces don't run at max output most of the time, so to find out which one had the lower output.

If anyone can give any advice on either I'd appreciate it. Good or bad experiences with either?

Thanks

Getting a new furnace is great and all, especially if you have a cracked heat exchanger or your place ends up being sealed up well enough to need a 2-pipe install but the usual takeaway from having an energy audit and doing renovations to reducing usage is that you usually end up getting a smaller furnace installed.

If you had an energy audit and are doing what you should to reduce your heat loss, you better have a mighty big house for a 80 or 90k furnace. I have a house with fiberglass insulation and I could run a 40k 95% furnace and still be at 70 degrees inside when it's -40c or -40f outside and this is with 2200sq ft.

Fix the house first, then get a load calculation that factors your air infiltration and insulation after you've done your work and before you make a 20 year mistake on an oversized equipment purchase that won't be as efficient as it could be because its oversized and running short cycles.

My house is 2150 sq ft and my current furnace is a 100K 80% efficient. It's obviously not running that well any more but still. I get government rebates back if I do it before the end of this month, so there's not a lot of time to fix anything else. Also, according to my audit there really isn't a lot more I can do to my house. It's 25 years old, but it's sealed really well. There's only a few little things I can do but that's about it. We get very cold in Winnipeg, especially with the windchill, that's where the big issues come in to play for us.

I just got an email back from the Bryant guy, and the modulating furnace actually goes all the way down to 26K BTU output. That's the 987M 80K 97% efficient furnace. This furnace, according to the guy, will run constantly but at a lower setting unless it needs to throttle up. So this unit will run anywhere from 26K - 78K BTU Output.

The modulating furnace sounds like a win to me. I highly doubt the 2 stage will go anywhere near that low.