Who Needs Your 'Best' Furnace?
There are many reasons your customers should want to to own your ‘best’ furnace, with energy efficiency being among the least of them. When you consider all the benefits 90+ furnaces provide in comfort, noise level and warranty, their energy efficiency is the least important reason to invest in one.
Candidates for your best furnace are homeowners:
• with a furnace located within their conditioned living area, such as a closet;
• with a noise problem or simply wanting the quietest furnace possible;
• with “temperature stratification,” where it’s cold near the floor and hot near the ceiling;
• with gross “temperature swings,” where, the house gets cold, the furnace kicks on, then it gets hot;
• with a failed heat exchanger who plan to keep their home;
• with a furnace located within the heated space that are experiencing a “drafty” home;
• with sensitivity to drying effects of forced air furnaces
• with concerns about the heat from the flue vent or where it poses a safety hazard;
• who are going to keep their home and want the lowest possible heating cost.
Noise
The sealed combustion chamber in the super-high efficiency furnaces (using a “two-pipe” vent system) solves noise complaints. Add a variable-speed blower motor, and you’ve got one of the quietest forced-air home heating (and cooling) systems you can have.
Temperature Stratification and Swing
Variable-speed blowers and variable capacity burners greatly reduce, if not completely eliminate temperature stratification because the blower runs almost continuously, and variable capacity burners prevent temperature swings by running at “low flame” almost continuously.
And, variable-speed indoor blowers also make the make home more comfortable during the air conditioning season.
Failed Heat Exchangers
Investing in a new furnace with a lifetime heat exchanger warranty is the lowest cost alternative for homeowners who are keeping their home. A statement I’ve made to homeowners who are buying a new furnace due to a cracked heat exchanger is, “If you already owned the furnace I’m going to install for you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now, because the component you’re having trouble with would be replaced free of charge. The only thing you’d be paying for is the labor to install it.”
Draftiness
Infiltration from combustion air makes homes drafty. A 100,000 Btu furnace requires 1,500 cubic feet of combustion air per hour of operation. During the coldest periods of winter, a 2,000 square foot home can use up to two “housefuls” of air per day!
The combination of the sealed combustion chamber and venting system of the super high-efficiency furnaces eliminates draftiness caused by infiltration by bringing all of the combustion air to the furnace through a sealed pipe.
Humidity control
A standard furnace using indoor air for combustion is blowing air that has already been heated and humidified out the flue, while bringing cold, dry outside air into the living area. 10°F outside air with a 70% RH drops to 6% RH when brought indoors and heated to seventy-two degrees.
The sealed, “two-pipe” combustion system of the super high-efficiency furnaces eliminates the drying effects of infiltration by using outside air for the combustion process, thereby allowing the inside air to retain its humidity.
Keeping the humidity in the house instead of blowing it out the flue also helps homeowners save water.
Safety
Customers who’ve been burned by the vent pipes of their old furnaces often find the lower temperatures of the vent pipes of the super high-efficiency furnaces ample enough reason to buy one.
The key success in any industry is to find out what the public wants, and let them have it. Good salespeople are problem solvers. Always look at your customers’ needs and fill them. Take an interest in your potential replacement customers. Find out what problems they’ve been having that are caused by their existing equipment. When you look at the features and benefits of your best furnace, you’ll see it may very well do the best job of eliminating them and make the occupants more comfortable, and that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?