If you’re constructing a new home or your old furnace has finally kicked the bucket, it’s time to invest in a new one. However, with so many options out there, it can be difficult to understand what furnace is right for your home. By reading through the buying guide below, you should be better informed to make a great purchasing decision for your new furnace.
Start With Figuring Your BTU Capacity Needs
Before you can decide on a specific furnace for your home, you need to know how powerful your new furnace should be. To do this, you’ll need to start by formulating the total square footage of your home. Let’s say, for example purposes, that your home is 1,000 square feet.
Next, you’ll need to know how many BTUs your furnace will need to produce per square foot. BTU stands for British thermal unit, and it’s simply a unit of measurement to determine the power you need. For Oklahoma residents, you want a furnace with a BTU capacity of about 40 BTUs per square foot of your home. Based on our suggested square footage of 1,000, you’re going to need a furnace that has a BTU capacity of 40,000.
Decide on a Fuel Type
There are four main types of furnaces that you can purchase. These are electric, propane, heating oil, and natural gas. If you’re replacing an existing furnace, it’s typically easiest to opt for replacing it with a similar type of furnace as you already have the infrastructure established.
Electric furnaces are a great option if you don’t want to store fuel or have it piped into your home. These furnaces tend to be cheaper to purchase and maintain. However, they can be expensive to run as they solely use electricity to heat your home.
Propane furnaces are more expensive to purchase than electric furnaces but tend to be much cheaper to operate. You’ll need to have a storage tank for your propane outside of your home. Propane is well-known to produce the same amount of heat as other fuels without using as much fuel to do so.
Heating oil furnaces are very common throughout the country. These furnaces cost around the same to purchase as both propane and natural gas systems. However, heating oil is cheaper to run than both propane and electric furnaces.
Natural gas furnaces are the most commonly used type of furnace out there. Natural gas is a very clean-burning fuel that can be piped directly to homes in areas where natural gas supplies are. When it comes to operating costs, natural gas is cheaper to purchase than heating oil, propane, and electricity.
The Three Furnace Stage Options
Apart from choosing between the type of fuel that you want your new furnace to use, you’ll need to consider what type of stage options you want. There are three main ones out there: single-stage heat, two-stage heat, and modulating heat.
Single-stage furnaces have been the most commonly utilized. They consist of one flame that is either fully on or off. The thermostat will turn the furnace on when the temperature in your home is under what you have set. The furnace will cycle through a burn cycle to heat up your home to within a couple of degrees of your set temperature before it kicks back off.
The two-stage furnace, also known as multistage heat, is a fairly newer option that has come out in the last 15 or so years. It offers two sizes of flames. The small flame is utilized when the temperature is mild while the large flame is used when the temperature is cold. With multistage heat, you can enjoy a steady stream of heat, unlike the on and off of the single-stage furnace. Two-stage furnaces will heat your home up to within a degree of your set temperature.
Lastly, we have a modulating heat furnace. This furnace tends to produce the most comfortable environment of all three. However, it does come at a much higher price than both single and two-stage furnaces. With modulating heat, a furnace is able to micro-manage its flame to be the precise size that it needs. This type of furnace operation will bring your home’s actual temperature to within about .2 degrees of your set temperature.
Excellent Furnace Services
TS Heat & Air provides residents of Oklahoma City, OK, with excellent furnace services. We also offer heating, cooling, indoor air quality, air purification, equipment change-out, and new construction services. Call us today to get the help that you need with your home.
