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If you do an online search on electric furnaces, you’ll find this question often pops up: “Do electric furnaces create carbon monoxide?” That people are asking this shows that many homeowners are unaware of the important basics of how different types of furnaces run. We want to clear up some of these misunderstandings and address the broader question of whether or not an electric furnace is a far safer choice than a natural gas furnace for home heating.
There is never a wrong time during the year to consider doing upgrades or heating repair in Studio City, CA or elsewhere in So Cal. Heaters do less work in our climate, and there are long stretches around the year where you can plan to make a major replacement without much worry about losing out on comfort because of lower temperatures.
With that in mind, we’d like to talk about one of the best choices available to you for an upgrade from your current, older furnace: the condensing furnace.
GREAT NEWS! Your family does NOT have to be test subjects for the nation after all. American Standard, the #1 most reliable brand of furnaces, has received a Variance from the government’s South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) ultra-low-Nox Furnace Rule 1111.
If you need a new Furnace but are worried about the high-temperature flame technology in the newly released ultra-low-Nox furnaces we’ve got you covered with the most reliably tested energy-efficient furnaces available in the San Fernando Valley. That’s correct! The #1 brand of heating equipment has received a variance from the South Coast Air Quality Management District Rule 1111 and we are able to sell and install the excellent American Standard equipment we have been installing for years without issues or problems.
Let us give you some background information regarding the new furnace regulations passed in Los Angeles County and a few surrounding areas:
In order to improve air quality in our communities SCAQMD mandated that furnaces sold in our community needed to reduce Nox Gas emissions from 40 ng/j to 14 ng/j. You don’t have to understand the technology to see that reducing anything by more than 2/3 is a tall order. You may be ready for a flying car, but mandating that one be built by a certain date doesn’t mean the technology will be ready for you 🙂
For the past 10 years world-wide HVAC equipment manufacturers have toiled with inventing new technology for our relatively small community. Keep in mind this regulation, known as Rule 1111, doesn’t apply to any other State in the nation, it doesn’t even apply to San Diego or Ventura County. It is strictly a regulation on furnaces sold in Los Angeles County and some surrounding areas.
In order to comply with Rule 1111 manufacturers vastly increased the flame temperature in the furnace to burn up more Nox gas faster. To keep customers safe from the new furnaces over heating manufacturers changed the installation requirements to require more empty space around the furnace.
Frankly, this whole Rule 1111 makes us nervous. We remember in 2000, when a catastrophe hit the heating and air conditioning industry; Reports of 50 house fires caused the Consumer Product Safety Commission to recall 110,000 technologically flawed furnaces. The flawed technology was made by a company named Premier Consolidated. Many flawed furnaces were already installed in people’s homes. People were forced to be without heat while emergency services attempted to solve the problem
Premier Consolidated has long since gone bankrupt but the flawed technology and subsequent furnace recall hurt people.
We are cautious by nature and SAFETY has always been our number one priority. Our fear is that Rule 1111 is forcing manufacturers to release furnaces containing inadequately tested technology into the market place. We would not install one of these new furnaces in our home and we don’t want our customers to be test subjects for the rest of the nation.
We are big environmentalists and are proud to be on the front lines in the fight to save our planet! In fact, we install many heat pump heating systems, which are completely electric and an excellent choice for reducing the carbon footprint of your home.
We don’t know how long the Rule 1111 Variance will last but this is something we fought for and we are thrilled to offer as a reliably safe gas furnace option to our customers!
If you are interested in learning more and discovering the best system for your home please call 818-780-0701 to set up a FREE in home estimate.
Kindest regards,
Dean and Lisa Gilford
Kilowatt Heating, Air Conditioning and Electrical chooses to sell American Standard brand heating and air-conditioning, the #1 most reliable manufacturer year after year. Although we have installed every other brand we find American Standard to be the most dependable.
The usual place you’ll find furnaces in homes across the U.S. is the basement. But in Southern California, basements are extremely rare, so most homes have floor furnaces (a.k.a. closet furnaces) instead. But this isn’t the only place that you can have a furnace to keep your home warm. A furnace can be relocated from the closet into the attic. If you’re thinking of doing this, we recommend you give our technicians a call. They can give you advice about whether this is a good step or not, since the situation is different for every home.
As a homeowner, you have a larger selection of furnace types for household heating than ever before. You might even say that the selection is a bit, well, bewildering. That is why it is very important that you have a professional HVAC installer to assist you whenever it’s time to put in a new heater for a home, either as a first installation or as a replacement for an inefficient older unit.
Two weeks ago we posted about replacing old floor furnaces with safer and more energy-efficient units. In general, older natural gas furnaces—regardless of type—are wasteful of energy compared to newer ones. The AFUE ratings of furnaces from more than a decade ago range between 60% to 80%, which means they waste between 20% to 40% of their energy when generating heat. New, high-efficiency furnaces, however, can achieve remarkably high AFUE ratings. Some ENERGY STAR-certified furnaces have AFUE ratings of 97%, which means they waste only 3% of the energy they use. The rest go straight to generating heat.
Recently, we replaced an aging floor furnace for a customer and installed an energy-efficient heating and air conditioning system for the house. The floor furnace was not only old, it was in danger of becoming a safety hazard. This is a good reminder for people out there that extremely old furnaces can turn into dangerous systems. It’s much better to replace the system than to try to keep repairing it. Not only are there more effective, energy saving systems out there, but they’re also much safer for you and your family.
‘Tis the season (fall, that is) when homeowners start to consider whether they should replace their old, inefficient heating equipment with something that runs better and wastes far less energy. This is an important issue in Southern California: since we don’t run our heating systems that often, we want to make sure that they aren’t energy guzzlers during the periods when we do have to use them.
