This is the furnace that came with an old Victorian house I’m currently helping some friends renovate. It seems that every house I’ve ever owned has needed a new furnace. I mean sure, the old furnace was still there clunking along and producing heat, but it was always some embarrassingly old thing installed by someone that obviously didn’t care about energy efficiency (or it predated the invention of efficient furnaces entirely). But like all owners of these same houses before me, I let it slide and let projects that seemed more urgent on the surface suck up my time. I renovated kitchens and bathrooms or replaced roofs. It was financially easy to justify the procrastination as well: heating bills for a typical house are under $1000 per year in my area, but if you hire out the installation of a new furnace you’re looking at about five grand. Even more if you’re replacing the air conditioning system at the same time. Even if you could find one that ran on free magic unicorn dust you would have a six year payback and more realistically it will take decades. So I let the slow leakage continue and always felt a small hole in my heart every time that machine kicked on, because for Mr. Money Mustache, energy efficiency is a moral issue even more than it is a financial one. I figured the numbers would work out much better if I could actually do the replacement job myself, because a top-of-the-line gas furnace only costs about $1200 online these days. But I didn’t know exactly how to do it and there never seemed to be a good time to learn*. Nobody I knew had ever replaced their own furnace, and the building materials stores don’t even sell them – everybody says you need to hire a pro for such a thing. But finally, here in the year 2015 and at the embarrassingly late age of 41, I have finally studied up on the necessary tricks, successfully installed two beautiful high-efficiency gas furnaces alongside friends, and am here to tell you it is a perfectly reasonable do-it-yourself project after all**. So let’s get started. Step 1: How the hell does a furnace work? When you get right down to it, a gas furnace is just a box-shaped heater connected to some tubes. These days, they have added more internal complexity to make them more efficient, but all you really need to know as the installer is this: Cold Air in, Warm air out, Gas and Electricity in, Combustion air In and Out. It gets even easier if you write these same things on a picture of a box (aka furnace). Figure 1: Furnaces are Simple Step 2: What kind do I need and where do I buy it? In general, you’ll want a high-efficiency (94% or higher) condensing furnace, with variable speed blower and roughly the same overall heating capacity as the one you’re replacing. Armstrong Gas Furnace TroubleshootingIt can be smaller in physical size (they have shrunk nicely over the years), but probably not much bigger since you have to fit it into the same space. Actually finding a place that sells furnaces can be tricky. USER’S INFORMATION MANUAL Gas-Fired Furnace. And keep all manuals for. Your gas furnace is designed to give many years of. Armstrong Parts Breakdowns. CG90UB075D16C 90% NAT GAS FURNACE. LBF80C112/125D20 LOBOY OIL FURNACE Installation Manual; Parts Breakdown. Like plumbing was a few decades ago, the heating and cooling industry is still an insider’s game, with low-profile stores that only sell to contractors, and contractors that insist their field is far too dangerous and exacting for any homeowner to master. If your personality type is at all similar to mine, the very words “consult a qualified installer” piss you off a little and make you want to learn the trade. Typing “” into Google leads to a mixed bag you can sift through, but I ended up finding the best results for my situation at a place called. Armstrong Gas Furnace ManualSpecifically, for both recent installs, my friends just went for the top-of-the-line unit. For a bit more background reading on the field, Consumer Reports has a free. Step 3: OK, Got The Furnace. What Other Parts Do I Need? Remembering that diagram above, you’re hooking up air, gas, intake, exhaust, and electricity. Everything will be available at your local building materials shop, with the possible exception of a. If you’re installing the furnace from scratch or replacing a Crazy Spaghetti Octopus monster and want to re-do the ducting in your basement completely, you might also pick up: • a: this is just a big sheet metal box that you set your furnace on. It serves as a big air scoop where you can connect all your return air ducts, and it also has a convenient slot to hold the air filter. • a to handle the heated air on its way out. You’ll cut holes in this to connect supply ducts to the rest of your house. Step 4: Let’s Hook This Sucker Up Read the Manual. Armstrong Furnace Troubleshooting ManualSomebody actually cared when they wrote this instruction manual. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Goodman furnace we used came with a fully detailed installation manual – none of this consumer-oriented “run screaming and consult a professional” attitude. Every hookup and specification, right down to how far to keep your vent pipes away from exterior windows, was described clearly with pictures. I spent a leisurely hour at home reading it from cover to cover the night before beginning the installation, which allowed me to have the big picture in mind on the big day.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |