Changing your furnace and air conditioner out for new efficient models will cut your energy usage as much as 50%. Older HVAC systems use a lot more energy than newer models.
Comparing your existing furnace to a high efficiency model. Furnaces are ated by their AFUE rating. Older Furnaces have ratings starting around 50% AFUE. What this means is a furnace at that efficiency level allows only 50% of the heat your furnace is producing and you are paying for to actually heat your home. The other 50% of the heat you paid for is just going out your chimney. A new high efficiency furnace will put 95% to as high as 98% of the heat into your home. Only 2 to 5% is lost. All that natural gas you paid for is going into your home, not out into the cold air.
An older Air Conditioner has similar issues. A/C’s are rated based on a SEER rating. Older air conditioners operate in the 8 to 10 SEER level. A high efficiency model will operate in the 16 to 22 SEER level.
We purchase our electricity in Watts. If you compare an 8 SEER AC to a 16 SEER unit for instance the 8 SEER is going to produce 8 BTU’s of cooling for that watt of electricity you just paid for. A 16 SEER A/C will produce 16 BTU’s of cooling for that same money. In other words you just cut your Air Conditioning bill in half. You can compare that to Miles per gallon. The old model get 8 miles to the gallon while the new unit gets 16 to 22 Miles per Gallon.
Another big factor is the motors being used in today’s Furnaces and Air Conditioners. The blower motor in the furnace cost between $250 to $400 LESS a year to operate. That by itself is the average bill for 1 or 2 months of heating or cooling your home. Imagine your Furnaces new blower motor just paid 1 or 2 months of your utility bill.
The motors on the Air conditioner feature similar savings.
Another popular option is a Dual Fuel system. With these systems the Air Conditioner actually heats the home down to around 16 to 18 degrees. The cost to operate this is much lower than the Natural Gas or Propane furnace. Once the temperature gets lower the furnace automatically takes over. This type system will save even more of your hard earned money
Call Energy Stars Heating and Cooling Co for assistance in selecting the best system for your home.