This particular customer is simply upgrading from a junky old oil furnace to an American Standard 80% furnace so he could increase the value of the home so he can get ready to sell it.
Older Oil Furnace
The existing oil furnace was framed in and somewhat concealed in the home, normally this would be a big problem, but in this case the wall is going to be removed making it fairly simple to replace.
Framed in oil furnace
Above you can see where the existing oil furnace is somewhat framed in. This type of oil furnace is called a lowboy, big and bulky is what they should call it.
American Standard 80% NG
As you can see above the old oil furnace has been removed, the back wall sheet rocked and the new American Standard 80% gas furnace installed. We included a Honeywell 4″ pleated filter bank and lined the existing chimney for proper venting of the unit.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
One of my customers has a 2nd home in upper Skagit county. This particular home I believe was someday going to be their retirement home. Unfortunately the house is very isolated in a rural area, making it very attractive for thieves and vandals. Sometime during the last few months someone broke in and stole a lot of copper from the house, some of which was the copper lines/coils used in the heat pump system.
Existing coleman heat pump
Above you see the existing Coleman heat pump we installed years ago, what is missing is the refer line set that ran from the heat pump to the indoor coil.
Damaged service valves
As you can see the thieves didn’t exactly use a tubing cutter to remove the copper lines. The service valves where compromised, actually twisted behind the access panel. The damage they caused far out ways the copper they recovered.
Coleman indoor coil
When the thieves tried do remove the indoor coil they realized it was bolted into the unit, so they then destroyed the indoor coil, leaving no room for reconnection.
New Coleman Indoor Coil
As you can see above the difference between the old damaged coil and the new coil being installed.
Tech brazing in the coil
The new coil had to come from the factory so it took a few weeks to get, but it slid right in and my technician brazed it right up. While brazing always run nitrogen through the lines to make a nice clean internal weld. Any internal scaling will cause damage down the road.
Pumping down the unit.
After the lines had been purged and welded we then tested with nitrogen. After we pass a nitrogen pressure test we pump down the lines with a vacuum pump. We use a micron gauge to monitor how well we are pumping the system down.
We really kept our fingers crossed because we did not know the extend of the internal damaged caused to the heat pump. In this cause the unit fired right up and ran like new.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
This older Carrier gas furnace was starting to cost the home owner more money than what the furnace was worth, honestly it should have been changed out years ago but a dollar here and a dollar there doesn’t seem so much until you add it all up.
Carrier 90% gas furnace
The existing Carrier furnace sat in a utility room downstairs next to the hot water tank. So the furnace being a upflow model was not very surprising, but very helpful.
95% American Standard gas furnace
Because the existing gas furnace was vented with PVC it made swapping over to an American Standard 95% gas furnace very easy. We simply had to make a small supply transition for the top of the furnace and then reconnect up to everything else. We did add a filter access door on the return duct for better filter access.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Its not very often we get to install an American Standard 95% furnace in a manufactured home, mostly in part due to the sizing constraints of the equipment. A typical manufactured home furnace closet is not sized deep enough for the 95% gas furnace.
Manufactured Home Gas Furnace
One of the challenges of this particular project was keeping the air conditioning system. The existing furnace had a built in coil cabinet, the new American Standard 95% does not have this feature. So we had to make a custom AC coil cabinet that also doubled as a transitional base can.
New American Standard 95% Single Stage
Above you see the new American Standard 95% single stage gas furnace. Because we are in a manufactured home both the venting and combustion air has to be piped to the outside, this is optional in a standard home. The condensate line was tapped into the existing AC drain line. We added a Honeywell F100 4″ pleated filter bank for a filtration system and to top it off with also added a Honeywell Vision8000 thermostat.
Even though the furnace sticks out slightly into the utility room I think the payoff in savings and comfort will be worth it.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Both these Trane Air Conditioners have damaged compressors. Both units where shorted to ground and one of the two units was even completely dry of refrigerant.
Dead Trane R-22 Air Conditioners
Fortunately for my customer you can still purchase R22 air conditioners, but the units must come dry with no refrigerant in them, otherwise they would have had to either just replace the compressors or completely replace both the indoor and outdoor equipment with R410a equipment. This would have been a very costly way to go for my customer.
New American Standard dry R22 AC Units
The new American Standard R22 units above came with no refrigerant but charged with nitrogen instead. We simply had to recover the refrigerant out of one of the existing units, set the new units, braze in, and then pressure test the entire system with nitrogen. Once the test was over we pumped down both systems below 500 microns then charged with R22. We did add filter driers as well as sight glasses to complete the project.
New R22 American Standard AC Units On Roof
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Our customer felt it was time to replace his existing Trane 80% furnace for something more efficient that also could make his home more comfortable for his family.
Trane 80% gas furnace.
The new American Standard (manufacture of Trane) 95% fully modulating gas furnace is in my opinion the best furnace you can purchase in the industry today. Even though my favorite to install is the American Standard 95% 2 stage variable furnace, the fully modulating model is very impressive and quickly growing on me.
American Standard fully modulating 95% gas furnace.
Even though you can not tell the physical differences between the two models you can defiantly tell the difference in performance. American Standard has a fully modulating gas valve with a variable speed blower. The communicating thermostat makes less than 1% adjustments in the gas valve to maintain setpoint and has real time adaptive intelligence. No more under or over shooting the thermostats setpoint…. makes for a very comfortable heating system.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Its not very often, but it does happen. A furnace installed in the wrong direction, well at least in my opinion its facing the wrong direction.
Rheem furnace facing wrong direction
Here you see a RHEEM 80% gas furnace facing into the garage. As you can see theres a tool box pushed up against the front of the furnace which makes it very tough to change a filter, never mind servicing.
New American Standard 95% 2 stage variable speed furnace.
As you can see above we installed the new American Standard 95% 2 stage variable speed gas furnace 180 degrees from where it was originally. Giving the home owner and service technician easy access. We also added a Honeywell F100 filter bank into the return system for even better filtration system.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
This is proberly one of the easiest types of furnace replacements there is, a 80% Carrier to a 80% American Standard.
Carrier 80% gas furnace
Basically the same physical size units, no drain or PVC connections to worry about, just reconnecting the venting and gas. The American Standard 80% furnaces are perfect for smaller homes. And usually fits the budget.
80% American Standard gas furnace.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.