So, you think you are ready to get a new furnace and you live in the Seattle area. What are the key factors you should consider when getting a new furnace? One of the most important factors to consider, which is not something that the homeowner should figure out themselves, is getting the right size of furnace.
The Size
The Pacific northwest, as a very rough rule of thumb, requires about 20 or 21 BTUs per square foot of home, but there are dozens of factors that can adjust the numbers significantly up or down like the age of the house, the insulation, having a crawlspace, the exposure of the house and many other things. So, the size of the furnaces going in there is very important. Also, important is that it’s completely not relative to the size of the previous furnace in the house. Oftentimes, furnaces in the house before back in the 60s, 70s, 80s or even 90s, were drastically oversized for the structure. Oversizing a furnace causes significant loss in efficiency, makes the furnace noisy and causes it to burn out prematurely.
The Brand
Another factor that people overestimate the importance of is the brand of the furnace. People sometimes are very specific to certain brands which, when looking at, breakdown statistics or other quality comparisons is not the most important factor. As long as you have one of the major brands installed at your house, you’re going to be fine as long as they have ready availability.
The Who
The next most important factor is who will actually be coming to your home to put the furnace in. You want to deal with a company that you can trust. In a company that you know if it breaks down 2 years from now, will readily be able to come back to your house to do the appropriate repairs.
The Cost
The next most important factor is cost. Nowadays, there are different ways to get a furnace into your house. Conventionally, going back to the old days the only option you had was to buy it. Nowadays, with the advent of subscription services for just about everything, you can now have a furnace installed in your house and just pay on a monthly basis and never pay anything for the furnace upfront.
In Addition
Factors that are generally not important in the Seattle area is having a humidifier because the humidity levels are relatively comfortable year-round. One thing that you may want to consider is adding a filtration system at the same time that you put in a new furnace. New furnaces have the ability to efficiently make the air circulate through your house 24 hours a day at low cost. So, if the air circulates anyway, you may as well filter the air 24 hours per day.
Regardless, give us a call at FurnaceUSA to get more information about getting a furnace installed.
