Should I Buy A Bigger Furnace?

Now that fall is in the air and you’re using your furnace to heat your home every day, how well is it working? Are you warm and comfortable throughout your home? Or do you notice problems from room to room?

When you notice hot or cold spots throughout your home, it’s your furnace’s way of telling you there’s a problem. It’s a warning sign that maintenance work is needed, and depending on the age, new equipment should be installed.

Of course, you can ignore the signs. Many homeowners do. And that’s when trouble happens, and it always happens at the worst possible time.

When you’re ready to install a new furnace, you’ll have choices to make on both efficiency and size. It’s easy to assume that if one furnace works well, installing a larger, more efficient model would make your home more energy efficient. But that isn’t the case.

Furnaces are designed to meet a certain load. If you buy one too small, it may constantly try to keep up with demand, running all the time trying to condition the air in your home. If you install one too large, it may short cycle, blasting out more than enough air to condition your home in a short period of time, shutting down before it fully cycles through.

And if a system doesn’t run as it properly should, it’s more likely to break down and malfunction.

When an HVAC technician installs a new furnace, he needs to make a heat load calculation to determine the proper size unit for your home. This calculation is made from considering things like house size, house location, number of windows, insulation factor, etc. Even similar houses in the same neighborhood can have different furnace needs.

You should also pay attention to your utility bills. Have they been going up every month without explanation? Do you pay more than neighbors with a house of similar size? This is a good indication your furnace is the wrong size. Even if it’s only several years old, installing a new one of proper size can have a huge impact on how much you spend each month to heat your home.

Is your furnace properly sized for your home?