There will come a day when your furnace will leave you cold. The typical furnace lasts around 15 years, and even if yours seems fully functional as that age nears, it’s still time to start thinking about replacing it. At some point, something will go wrong with your aging furnace, and it won’t make financial sense to repair it. There’s no point spending four figures to replace failed evaporator coils or a cracked heat exchanger—or even three figures for a blower motor replacement—on an old fuel-inefficient furnace that’s likely to break again soon.
But homeowners often put little thought into selecting a new furnace. When a furnace fails in the dead of winter, the homeowner typically takes the first option an HVAC pro suggests, anxious to get the heat back on before their pipes freeze. Problem: Some HVAC pros recommend only furnace brands with which they are affiliated and/or that offer them the best perks—this sector is rife with bonuses and gimmicks to influence installers.
Signs of Imminent Furnace Failure
Exploring furnace options is especially important if your aging unit is sending signals that its end is near. In addition to the obvious signal—your home is too cold—other signals include…
- New noises—the furnace starts making pops, clicks or screeches that it previously didn’t.
- Unexplained utility bill price spikes—your heating fuel usage skyrockets even though it hasn’t been especially cold and you haven’t set the thermostat any higher than usual.
- Operating more often—the furnace seems to be running much more than normal.
- Excessive dust—the furnace is blowing more dust than normal out of your vents.
Choosing the Best Furnace for Your Home
Top furnace brands contain components that are significantly sturdier than the parts found in lesser units, plus their models often include more features—but not surprisingly those top brands cost top dollar. Here are the best brands in each tier…
- Best: Trane and American Standard offer truly elite build quality. Don’t worry about choosing between these two brands—they’re made by the same company.
- Better than average: Carrier and Lennox are not much less reliable than the brands above, and they may be less expensive.
- Middle tier: Bryant, Frigidaire, Rheem and York are all reasonable in terms of quality and price but unexceptional.
- Low end: Goodman (and arguably Goodman’s sister brands Daikin and Amana) and WeatherKing are appropriate mainly for property owners who want to keep up-front costs as low as possible and have less concern about reliability or efficiency.
Four more factors to consider when selecting a furnace…
- Efficiency. A new furnace’s “Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency” (AFUE) is likely to land between 80% at the low end and 99% at the high end. The sweet spot for most homeowners currently is in the low-to-mid-90s, not the high 90s—furnaces that achieve the absolute highest AFUE ratings tend to be extremely expensive.
- Size. Additional capacity isn’t necessarily better—a properly sized furnace will be more efficient and effective than one that’s too big or too small for the home. Don’t assume your new furnace should be the same size as the one it’s replacing—that earlier furnace might have been incorrectly sized or your home’s heating needs might have changed over the years, due to added insulation, added living space or other modifications. Confirm that the HVAC pro you select will perform a “Manual J” sizing calculation to determine the heating and cooling loads for HVAC equipment.
- Installer. If you don’t already have an HVAC pro you like, ask local realtors for recommendations. Experienced realtors know which local home pros are trustworthy, and realtors often are willing to share info like this to build relationships with homeowners who might later become clients.
- Heat pump option. Heat pumps are the future of HVAC—the latest models are effective even in very cold parts of the US. A heat pump essentially takes heat from the ground or air outside, transfers it to a liquid refrigerant and pumps the refrigerant to a coil or heat exchanger inside the unit. Air blown across the coil is then heated before being dispersed through the ductwork and into the rooms of a home. The upfront cost of installing a heat pump is much steeper than simply replacing a furnace, but lower heating and cooling bills can help offset that, as well as state and federal tax incentives.
Furnace Replacement Cost
A residential furnace of reasonable quality and efficiency is likely to cost between $3,000 and $6,000 installed, assuming the home has all the necessary ductwork in place. But there’s a catch—a new furnace often won’t work well with an existing air-conditioning system and thermostat, so it might make sense to replace all these HVAC components at the same time. That can push the bill up to $7,000 to $10,000, on average.
