I have a crappy furnace. I've lived in my house for almost 9 years and have had to call a furnace repair person at least 5 times in that period. That doesn't include cleanings or tune-ups. Most of the time it's a sensor, but once it was the whole logic board and that costs a small fortune. Well, I've spent the better parts of the last 3 days at home trying to get my beastie fixed again and still no joy.Yesterday, someone had the courage to tell me that I was the unfortunate owner of a crappy model. A known-well-throughout-the-industry crappy model. So I'm at the point now where I should decide - is this money pit worth maintaining for another 8 years or so, or is it time to bite the bullet and buy a new, high efficiency furnace? Not to worry - I'll only be looking at $4500 (installed) for the (supposed) Cadillac of new furnaces, which the boys recommend I go for if I intend to stay in my home for a spell - which I do. The problem is that the newest furnaces can't share the original chimney with a typical hot water heater, they need to be vented through new plastic piping out the side of the house. But..... I can use the original chimney if I decide to upgrade my hot water heater to one of those fancy shmancy (translation - $2300 plus installation) on demand, tank-less hot water heaters - which would need its own plastic venting out the side of the house. These tank-less heaters are supposed to be the cat's meow, except that they don't do well with our hard water. So that would mean getting a water softener (a-la $3000). Man you should have seen how excited they were getting with all this equipment they wanted to sell me.
At least they were nice enough to recommend I wait until summer and try to get a new furnace on sale.
Oh - and before someone says "Oh Karl! You should look into getting a government rebate to help pay for your new high efficiency furnace!", I have news for you. They only give you a rebate if you agree to a complete home energy evaluation (cost $200+) and agree to implement any recommendations that those people tell you to do, such as getting all new windows or re-insulating your attic. Sorry - I'm not paying upwards of $2500 just so some dude with a clipboard can put a tick-mark towards giving me a fat $500 rebate from the government. Nope.
OK, I'm done now............
2 comments:
Maxflex said,
Oh man, mine is 11 years old and I have started to look for a new one, I suspect that her time is coming. The thing is that, I have not seen them on sale during the summer; I have also been looking at getting a snow blower on sale, and again during the summer, nada. If you find one place that has furnaces on sale, could you post the info please? I’ll do the same if I find it first.
Sounds familiar. I just "got there, done that". My builder spec furnace has also been a money pit. 3 or 4 repairs in 3 years. It died completely in January 2007 despite being only 7 yrs old. The house was built in 2000. Called to get a quote on a new one (Lennox top end High-Eff) and then did some searching for comparable prices. Good luck with that! Prices on new furnaces must be state secrets! Couldn't find shite to compare if I was getting a decent deal. End result was $6500 fully installed and I threw in a new HW tank since it was a dog too. That was $8000 total. The job was professional, glad I went with a known BBB-member company.
I'm happy, family is happy, investment was money well spent. Too bad spec homes today are built with such crap materials! You'll never read that one in the Calgary Herald! Might upset all those housing advertisers! Ad revenues beat hard hitting news. Shame!
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