Again I find myself replacing a Rheem furnace, but with a twist. This customer was a referral, she wanted to make sure that she was being guided correctly by another company. Her complaint was she was smelling raw gas outside of her home, the furnace was running erratic and it was very noisy. The other company stated that the furnace needed a new control board, and keep in mind they just did a maintenance. It took me about 30 seconds to figure out that the burners where not providing a crossover from #1 to #2 burners. This will cause raw gas to be poured into the exchanger then of coarse outside, this will also cause erratic operation. Simply cleaning the burners would have solved this problem! And yes that is part of a maintenance!
After about 5 minutes of run time the furnace went out on a overheat high limit, we have good air flow, all grilles open and a clean filter … so based on the size of the home and the small duct design I determined the 80,000 btu furnace was over sized for the home and ducting.
So after going over several scenarios with my customer she decided it was time for a new furnace, she decided to go with a lower BTU American Standard 95% 2-stage variable speed unit with a Honeywell 4″ pleated filter system. In this home we would seldom see the 2nd stage kick in unless needed, and with the variable speed blower the furnace would operate much quieter and more efficient. And by down sizing we would help maintain a setpoint and not overshoot the thermostat.
Older Rheem Unit
Here we see the older Rheem unit, after looking deeper you could see where water was leaking from the inducer connection dripping down on the #1 and #2 burners, causing corrosion. This is typical of this model of Rheem. Again a simple maintenance would have solved this.
Existing Base Can Before.
Now after we removed the older Rheem furnace I found out what was contributing to the over heating of the furnace. The Rheem was incorrectly installed, the base can hole was cutting off air flow. Now I have known a lot of installers in my time, MOST would have just re-installed the new furnace and called it good. Especially how we are down sizing. I try to look at as if it where my home … so I decided to enlarge the opening just to be safe.
Modified base can.
Here you see I modified the base can to allow all the airflow to enter the supply ducting, this way I’m sure we will end the over heating issues and make for a better system.
New American Standard 95% Furnace
The new American Standard 95% 2 Stage Variable speed gas furnace installed correctly over a modified base can. After running the system it was much quieter and it did not blast us out of the home.
New Honeywell filter system
And of coarse I should not forget a picture of the 4″ pleated filter bank by Honeywell … A MUST!
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? Or a complete heating system? We install them and all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
My latest install went very smooth, the older Trane furnace was the same physical size as the newer American Standard and from an installation stand point this is literally fantastic. The only difference here is we are going from a 80% efficient gas furnace to a higher 95% American Standard 2 stage variable speed unit. All we simply need to do is run a new independent PVC vent for the new furnace(blocking the older vent) and a condensate drain line.
Existing Trane Unit.
As seen above the existing installation looks good, ducting is square, sound-lined, leveled and sealed with a access door cut in for filters.
New American Standard 95%
Above you see the finish product, oh I forgot to mention the Honeywell 4″ pleated filter bank we cut in. Promise me this … if you ever replace your furnace at a bare minimum install a Honeywell 4″ pleated filter system, you will thank me.
During the sales call for this customer they mentioned they had cool rooms in their home, I of coarse promised to look over their ducting during installation. I expected a few kinked runs ..maybe a few dampers not adjusted correctly. What I did not expect to find in a home only 10 years old was none sealed ducting, especially considering the good workmanship in the garage.
None sealed ducting.
Above is a picture taken in the crawl space below the furnace at the supply plenum. As you can see there is no sealant or even an attempt to seal these takeoffs. And the sad part is these where in plain view not even hidden by insulation. During the building of this home it was code to seal all ducting with an approved sealant, not to mention just good practice. I had my apprentice seal these up for my customer with some pro-seal sealant.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? Or a complete heating system? We install them and all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
RHEEM furnaces have got to be my #1 furnace replacement, combining the fact there are so many in this area as well as there problematic inducers and pressure switchs. Its not hard to make a case to replace them. In this case the customer already replaced the inducer a month ago ..now looking at a circuit control board, they elected to replace the furnace. Good choice.
Older RHEEM 80% Furnace
A big issue with RHEEM when doing a replacement is the size of the unit, their about 6″ shorter than the American Standard, but fortunately they have the same footprint.
New American Standard 95%
This particular replacement to the American Standard 95% 2-Stage Variable speed furnace was fairly easy. The condensate drain line was already in place, the existing duct work was easily modified, the furnace location was in the garage and the customers(including their dog) where very pleasant to be around.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? Or a complete heating system? We install them and all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
The American Standard 95% 2-Stage Variable speed is by far my favorite American Standard furnace to install to date. And in this case it was a perfect fit. The original furnace was located under the home… not unusual in homes without garages that have limited space, but I couldn’t understand why it was located under this home.
Furnace/Duct Under Home.
Above is a picture of some ducting …behind that ducting is the original furnace. I took this picture so i could get a feel of where I had to connect up to with the new ducting.
New Furnace Location.
Above you can see where I wanted to place the new furnace in the garage, and of course its right where the book shelf is.
New Furnace Overall picture.
Because there was no attic to speak of we ended up doing a sidewall return air inlet into their family room, the supply duct easily went into the crawl space from the garage. We ended up redirecting the existing ducting into a new trunk line.
American Standard 95% 2-stage Variable
Above is a closer picture of the new furnace in the garage, where furnaces really should end up. We ended up re-using the existing EAC filter, converting it over to a 4″ pleated filter bank. Now this furnace is easy to maintenance and repair if needed. And as you can see, plenty of room to the right for the HWT in the future.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? Or a complete heating system? We install them and all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
OK, I want to clarify the title, the job was not challeging to me as far as skill is concerned by anymeans. I enjoyed this project because it went south and I saved it, let me explain. The customer was in the middle of a remodel and lost her job, at times it appeared she really didn’t know what she wanted, but she really needed a new furnace and her HWT vented correctly. And I admit I almost gave up on this project from the point of sale, but I could see she really needed my help. The installer clashed with her personality causing even more issues. So I decided to redirect my installer to another project and take over. After a few hours on Saturday I have a very happy customer.
Before The Install
Above is a side picture of where the furnace eventually ended up.
Front view before
Above is a front picture before the furnace. Keep in mind I really did not know where the furnace would end up when I took these pictures.
New furnace/ HWT moved
As you can see above we moved the HWT over to the right making space for the furnace, re-vented the HWT up through the roof. We installed the new 95% American Standard furnace just under an existing supply duct and rerouted the RA over.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? Or a complete heating system? We install them and all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
There becomes a time in a furnaces life that you need to way the repair cost versus a new furnace.. In this case it was time to replace. We replaced this 90% Trane(American Standard) with a new 95% American Standard.
Older Trane Unit.
I want to point out in the picture above the Electronic Air Cleaner (EAC), grey thing in the middle. If a service tech where to take out the instructions and actually read how these need to be installed he would be amazed. Almost every EAC I see is installed incorrectly. The air MUST be evenly distributed across the EAC cells and sized for the furnace CFM. In most cases this requires 24″ of straight ducting ahead and behind the EAC.
New 95% furnace
In this case the customer would be better served in my opinion with a 4″ pleated installed in the EAC box.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? Or a complete heating system? We install them and all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Here I swapped out an older RHEEM gas furnace for a new American Standard 80%. This was probably the most common type of furnace changeout up to 2 years ago, now I am seeing more upgrades than anything.
Older RHEEM Gas Furnace
And as you can see we added a Honeywell True Steam 6 gal Humidifier below the new American Standard gas furnace.
New American Standard 80%
By adding the humidifier they will be able to maintain a minimum setting of humidity in the home. This is good for their health as well as energy cost. We also added the Honeywell 4″ pleated filter above.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? Or a complete heating system? We install them and all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Im slowing building and adding information to my site, I thought it was about time to build a furnace maintenace page, explaining a few things. Its alot of reading … but I feel worth it.
http://www.alpineheat.com/FurnaceMaint.html
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? Or a complete heating system? We install them and all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.