Should you spend money on Furnace repair or install a new Furnace once and for all?

Well, a lot of times these decisions depend on how much budget you have.  New Furnace installation is of course an expensive purchase, and a lot of people want to just spend less money and have the old furnace repaired.  But sometimes it is just not worth the repair.  If you are a homeowner in Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, or Richmond, or any of the greater Vancouver area, you might just want to also consider the government rebates available in your area too.

If your furnace broke down due to a broken heat exchanger, then you are out of luck for repair.  In many cases, replacing the heat exchanger can cost nearly as much as to install a new furnace – you have to disassemble the whole furnace in order to change the heat exchanger, so the cost for the part as well as the labour can be very high.  Yet in the end, you will still be left with an old furnace which may fail again, so many heating professionals would just simply advise you to change the furnace.

Now the problem with broken or cracked heat exchanger is that Carbon Monoxide (or CO) can leak out from the crack into your rooms.  We covered the dangers of CO leak in the previous post, and we know it must be dealt with seriously and as soon as it’s found.  This is one of those times when you definitely don’t want to take any chances.

According to CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Carbon monoxide is “an odorless, colorless gas that can cause sudden illness and death” (2006). 

Where is this killer gas found and what can happen when you have CO poisoning?  We can discuss some of those concerns here and prepare you with understanding of the dangers involved with Carbon Monoxide Poisoning.

WHERE

When cars, stoves, burning charchoal, and gas heating systems such as funaces and boilers produce combustion fumes, CO is found in the exhaust.  The odorless gas can accumulate in “enclosed or semi-enclosed spaces” (CDC 2006), and people will get CO poisoning when breathing it in.

SYMPTOMS

“Headache, dizziness, weakness, nausea, vomiting, chest pain, and confusion” (CDC 2006) characterize the symptoms of CO poisoning, and severe poisoning can lead to loss of consciousness and even death!

Why is CO so dangerous? CO can be picked up by Red Blood Cells in the blood stream much quicker than oxygen, and can possibly replace oxygen in blood if there is high concentration of CO in the air.  This can cause lack of oxygen supply to the body tissues and cells, and thus causing health hazard and eventual death.

Therefore, to avoid the dangers of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning, it is very important to “have your heating system, water heater and any other gas, oil, or coal burning appliances serviced by a qualified technician every year” (CDC 2006).

Source from:

“Carbon Monoxide Poisoning.” www.cdc.gov. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, July 2006. Web. 9 Dec. 2011.

It’s very important to have your furnace cleaned and maintained at the beginning of every heating season to make sure you can have a smooth and worry free winter.  Just because the machine was working fine last winter does not mean it will for this winter, and the big mistake that a lot of homeowners make is to cut-back at the cost for regular annual heating maintenance.  Once the machine breaks down, there is no turning back and you will need to either repair it, or worse comes to worst, you might even have to replace the whole thing.

Changing a furnace is a costly process.  When your old furnace reaches the end of its life-span and you need to make a decision for installing a new one, there is a number of things that need to be considered which will decide the cost of installation.  We will discuss some of those factors at the sections below.

Possible Furnace Cost Factors:

First, the location of the furnace in your home is an important cost deciding factor.  It may not sound like much at first, but if your furnace is fixed at a hard-to-access part of the home, or the doorway to the furnace is too narrow for the new machine to be installed, or there is not enough room for technicians to move about and work, all these possible issues will raise the cost for your installation.

The condition of your existing furnace duct system is another factor that needs to be considered.  The duct system is what carries the warm air from your furnace throughout your house.  Old ducting can be leaky and non-efficient.  There may be additional duct work that has to be done with the new furnace installation.

Exhaust piping is also a common issue.  New furnaces now use PVC piping for venting exhaust, and if your house has the old system with the chimney venting, there is for sure extra work to be done to accomodate the new furnace.

Of course the type and model of the Furnace machine you want to install is a big cost factor.  There are much more factors the heating professionals consider in quoting on an installation, but we will leave those details for another time for now.  It is important to remember that each household has its own unique circumstances, and professionals are not able to give accurate quote for installation prices until an onsite evaluation has been done to determine your specific system needs.  You may try to get a number of quotes from different companies offering the service, and this means each company will have to send their own professional to your house to do the assessment.  Keep in mind though, the quality of contractor is also very important.  With good quality contractor naturally comes with a cost, but you will also pay later for troubles of poorly done work by places offering cheaper deals.  The judgement is up to you as the homeowner, but why go through trouble to find out the quality is the best in the end?

In order to be eligible for the rebate, homeowners must have audits done, one before and one after the upgrade.  The rebate program is currently on going until March 31, 2012, which is the date when the second audit must be done by.

For the Lower Mainland area, you can get up to $1290 rebate for an upgrade to ENERGY STAR 95% AFUE or better gas furnace with DC Variable speed motor.

You can get up to $70 discount on your Home Energy Audits when you instal the upgrade through us.

Here is a recap of the rebate process:

1.  Book your first Audit before the installation.

2.  Complete furnace upgrade and get a permit.

3.  Book your second Audit after the installation, and have it done before March 31, 2012.

4.  Apply for your rebate.

Source from: http://www.homeperformance.com/

Pictures taken taken through out the installation process of high efficiency wall mount boiler and a storage tank. this is one of the highest efficiency methods for radiant heating application while being able to supply plenty of hot water for your showers through the storage tank fed by a high efficiency Boiler.

This is a project of a new Boiler installation in residential scale which is involved with the piping properly set up for applications where a section of the house is radiant and the other section is baseboard heating.

image of furnace combustion

1HX6ahDqoY4

http://youtu.be/1HX6ahDqoY4

I spent an entire afternoon in richmond doing repair to an old house that repaired extensive work. Vancouver Furnace repair