I may need a new furnace for the house. How bad is this going to be?

Normally, I don’t use my gas forced air furnace much because the wood burner heats the house. When it does run, it’s at a reduced a temperature when I’m not home. With some home remodeling going on, I’ve been  relying on the furnace more but found some issues. The blower shuts off while the burner is still on. Putting the blower on constant,temporarily solves that issue but the house is slow to heat leading me to think the heat exchanger may have cracked due to the  idle blower. 

I have a local contractor coming out in the morning to check things out. It’s a family run business that sells Bryant furnaces. If this were summer, I normally would call three or four contractors and make a decision after much deliberating. 

So if I need a replacement furnace is Bryant a good furnace? Will I get hit with a surcharge because it’s a emergency replacement (but during regular business hours)? 

It really just bugs me that I can’t do any research before such a big purchase but that’s on me for not doing this months ago.  I’ve just had a lot going on. 

BTW, the furnace is probably original to the house (1952). The CM detector hasn’t gone off and I don’t have any symptoms.

thanks!

About 10 years ago, my furnace in my gas forced furnace went out in my 1800 sq ft condo . This happened over Thanksgiving weekend while I was out of town and I had my sister at the house dog sitting. I think the bill was $2k to have the entire furnace replaced. 

I've got an older gas furnace that I've been keeping close tabs on, and kind of limping along. It heats 15-1600 sqft. I've had estimates from $5500-7000 for a highly efficient replacement. I'll use it as long as I can while I budget for it's replacement.

If you're not dealing with a particularly cramped installation(like, it's not in a closet) you have the time, and you're comfortable with basic residential plumbing & electric, consider installing it yourself. There are calculators online to help you size it correctly, as well as places to purchase the units directly from. You may even find a local distributor nearby to save on shipping.

In reply to Pete Gossett :

Timing! Summer would be a good time to do this. Unfortunately, I’m not that smart or organized. I’ll have to leave this to a pro.

Get the contractor to give you a written quote for a new install.  Let him assume that you'll be getting other quotes.  A reputable guy would give you a pretty tight number. 

Bryant is a good brand.  Others would be American Standard, Carrier, Lennox, Rheem, and Trane.  I'd call at least one other contractor and get him to quote it also.

What kind of shape is the duct system in?  On an install that old, I'd be concerned about all the other stuff that could drive the cost up over a simple replacement.

At any rate, let the guy look your current system over.  Might be a simple fix.

Just replaced my entire HVAC system in November.

Heat pump and air handler, house is all electric. Lennox brand, $5700 installed, done in a day.

December's electric bill ($175) was about 65% of last December's bill, average temp within a couple of degrees.

Get a couple quotes at least, I got 3 and they ranged from $5700 to over $10000.

The winning quote was the company who had installed the original system in 1977.

Is it gas or oil?

My oil forced air furnace seemed like it was on its last legs until I finally got a tech who knew what he was doing. He spent the time to really tune the injector/igniter alignment and now heater works better than it has in years. 

Furnaces are not expensive but installed furnaces are.

There's large markup on installation so I would see if you can repair the existing one for now.  At least get a price on that first.

We just had a new Bryant furnace and complete air conditioner put in this summer.   $8500 minus $500 in rebates.  

Yes, it hurt.   Next stop is a roof - that should be $10,000.   

Buy some Vaseline.   

Three years ago I had a new Lennox furnace installed.   $3970. $200 discount.  $445 rebate from power co.  Total out of pocket $3325.

5 years ago homeshield paid to replace my furnace. Cost us 34 dollars out of pocket to add a duct extension. Furnace installed price total was 4400. New AC this summer was 3600 but we had qoutes from 3200-7500. 

HAvc contractor came out and checked everything out. Apparently, the gas pressure is  low to the house due to how much demand the gas company is getting because of the cold weather . The low pressure doesn’t give enough of a flame to  adequately  heat the barrel heat chamber.  He adjusted the burner some and told me to leave the blower on constantly and the temp at one setting.  So this gives me a chance to get some estimates for future replacement.  $97 bucks  well spent.

On a side note, the contractor said I can’t kill the furnace I have and when I go to replace it he knows a local that will give me a couple bucks for it to heat his house with free gas.

Datsun310Guy said:

We just had a new Bryant furnace and complete air conditioner put in this summer.   $8500 minus $500 in rebates.  

Yes, it hurt.   Next stop is a roof - that should be $10,000.   

Buy some Vaseline.   

 

Lol

I hear ya! $8500 for roof last year.

Suprf1y said:

Furnaces are not expensive but installed furnaces are.

There's large markup on installation so I would see if you can repair the existing one for now.  At least get a price on that first.

On a 1952 furnace - even a 1972 furnace - he'll save enough in going from 45-50% efficiency up to 90%+ to at least partially offset the installation cost.  Unless every dollar is a serious issue right now, I wouldn't spend more than a $50 service call on that old furnace.

I have a Goodman Global 90% unit that is about 10 years old, and works great.  They used to be part of Amana, and are now owned by Daikin, who are probably the biggest HVAC manufacturers in the world.

You can probably get them to install just the furnace now, with space for an AC coil to be installed later, if you wish.

From what I understand, pieces of furnaces can rust. Other than that, basically anything can be replaced and serviced for a few hundred bucks in parts. Likewise for A/C other than the compressor. I am glad you got a real answer, some of these jerks take advantage of people and replace whole units instead of a pressure switch for dozens of dollars.

In reply to Duke :

That's why I said for now so he would have time to look at the alternatives. With the amount he normally uses it the payback is likely not an issue especially if he's going to replace and not have to pay top buck.

One of my coworkers just bought an older house with a large shop and bought two new furnaces to replace the old ones before he moves in and paid $650 ea for high efficiency gas, so they don't have to be that expensive.

The markup for HVAC equipment is staggering.  I'm a plumber and I don't have a problem calling the HVAC guys thieves.  They are almost as bad as the well guys.  I do very little HVAC work because I don't have the license to work on AC stuff, but I will occasionally step in and install a gas fired furnace for friends and family.  To give you an idea what I'm talking about....  My dad recently bought a small 2 story box of a house at auction.  I did all the plumbing/heating work.  He was getting bids between 14K and 18.5K to do a furnace in the attic with AC.  Complete system installed, permits pulled, etc.  I thought that was high, so I had my HVAC buddy come down and take a look.  He thought the estimates were all in the ballpark.  He wanted more to do the job, but couldn't get to it.  He said it would take 2 good guys 3 days to do the job.  I got him to put together a materials list and place the order for everything for the job.  He even padded it with some extra ductwork which went back to him after the job was done.  None of the estimates included electrical work or the running of the gas pipe to the attic.  My dad and I were planning on doing that ourselves.  Total cost of permits, materials, electrical, gas pipe, everything! was just over $4k.  I spent 1.5 days running gas pipe, vent pipes thru the roof, and installing the condensate lines.  My 74 year old dad spent 2 .5 days, running electrical and doing duct work.  So total we had 4 man days on the job.  At a minimum we saved over $10K, and thats pretty standard.  Do your homework.  Measure your furnace.  Find out how many BTUs it puts out.  Go on line and price out some furnaces.  Their pretty cheap compared to boilers and hydronic heat, but for some reason they become gold plated once someone wants one installed.

Suprf1y said:

In reply to Duke :

That's why I said for now so he would have time to look at the alternatives. With the amount he normally uses it the payback is likely not an issue especially if he's going to replace and not have to pay top buck.

One of my coworkers just bought an older house with a large shop and bought two new furnaces to replace the old ones before he moves in and paid $650 ea for high efficiency gas, so they don't have to be that expensive.

My gas bill is normally under $80 per month outright (not budget) because of the wood burner. Payback on a new furnace would take a long time. The issue came up because the wood burner is shut down until I complete the floor refinishing in that room and with the below normal temps the house just wasn’t as toasty. If I continue to live here, there will come a time where the wood burner will be too much work so a more efficient furnace needs to be considered at some point. 

In reply to tr8todd :

Good to know!

I had the guts of my furnace replaced about 10 years ago, and a few electronic components replaced since.  It is working well, but the whole system needs upgraded and updated, but I am scared of the bill.  I can swap out a furnace easily enough, the gas and electric lines are simple, but the A/C needs to be done by a pro and sizing ductwork to accommodate for additions is above my pay grade. 

In reply to tr8todd :

I hear you.  It's tough to not laugh at quotes like that when you have first hand experience installing it.  During the renovation of my ex's house, I ran gas pipe for a dryer from the basement to the second floor. It actually turned out to be one of the easier projects I did on that house. It might have been $50 in pipe and fittings. I can't imagine how much it would have cost to have a pro do it.  We also ran all of the ductwork for a future high velocity A/C system. There I can understand as the parts weren't cheap and it was tedious work. But the ex- is an HVAC engineer, so there was no way in hell she was paying to have someone else install anything.  It damn near killed her to have a friend of a friend install the A/C piping from the evaporator closet to the spot outside where the condensing unit will eventually go.  

Last January I had the 15 year old oil forced air furnace and the 20 year old AC setup removed and replaced with a high efficiency Trane gas furnace and a Trane AC unit.  The job included removing all the old oil system and running gas lines including to the heating stove in the family room and one for a future gas stove in the kitchen. The outdoor AC system was relocated to the other end of the house.

Cost was $11,000.

I have kept track of what oil and propane for the family room stove would have cost based on previous year usage and current pricing.  Comparing that to actual natural gas costs for 2017 I have saved $1600 for the year.  That does not consider any repairs I might have needed to do to the old systems.

Damn, these new furnaces you guys are paying $4000+ for installed cost next to nothing compared to what you’re paying.  Maybe I should be a furnace installer.  

I had a 23 year old Lennox Pulse furnace go out last Dec. (2016) but was able to figure out what was wrong and ordered the part to fix it. I was out of heat for about 48 hours with outside temps in the 30's to 40's. Not terrible but not something I wanted to go through again. Parts for a furnace as old as this are not carried in stock anymore. 

So I decided to replace the furnace & AC before this winter.  I went with Lennox again as the local HVAC company that sold this brand gave me the best price. I did some research on line and the only thing I found neg. on Lennox was a few years ago they had a recall on some heat exchangers that failed. It was confirmed when one sales guy brought up that issue when he asked about who else I was seeking bids from.

The bids ranged from the low $5K range to a high of a bit over $8K!  The house called for a 70-80K BTU furnace and a 2-2 1/2 ton AC. No duct work was required.

One way the Lennox guys saved me some money was by reusing the AC lines from the furnace to the location of the condenser outside. They flushed the lines and then sweated on new fittings compatable with the new heat exchangers at both the furnace and condenser end.

This Dec. my neighbor who had the same Lennox Pulse furnace installed at about the same time 24 years ago had his go out.  He called the same HVAC guys that installed my new one and they had the part to fix it but  claimed the cost to fix it was going to run $800-1000!  So he elected to replace only  the furnace for $3K. They "loaned" him the part to keep his old furnace running until they came by to do the new install.