Furnace installation and replacement

Most furnaces in this valley run somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five years. The decision point usually isn't age on its own — it's a major part failing on something already old. A gas valve, a control board or an inducer motor on a twenty-two-year-old furnace is a repair you'll make once and then make again on a different component eighteen months later. A cracked heat exchanger ends the discussion entirely, because that furnace can't safely run.

The other honest reason is efficiency. A furnace from the late nineties is typically around eighty percent efficient, meaning a fifth of the gas you buy goes up the flue. A modern condensing furnace runs in the mid-nineties. Over a heating season that's a real difference on the bill, though not usually enough on its own to justify replacing something that still works. If your furnace is old but healthy, we'll tell you to keep running it.

As with cooling, bigger isn't better. An oversized furnace heats the thermostat's corner of the house quickly, shuts off, and leaves the far bedrooms cold — then does it again ten minutes later. We size off a load calculation, and it's common for the right answer to be smaller than what's currently installed, because the house has had windows and insulation done since it was built.

The parts of the job that separate a good install from a cheap one are mostly invisible afterwards. Venting is the big one: a high-efficiency furnace vents through PVC with a specific slope and specific clearances at the termination, and it needs a condensate drain that actually drains. Then there's gas line sizing, return air, the filter cabinet, and whether the electrical is properly bonded. We do all of it, we pull the permit where the city wants one, and the inspection is somebody else confirming we did.

Around here the venting question is often settled by the street you live on. A tight central-Richland closet can make the PVC runs for a condensing furnace genuinely awkward, while newer Kennewick and Pasco homes take them without drama. Out toward Benton City, Kiona and the West Richland acreage, propane changes the orifices, the manifold pressure and sometimes the whole recommendation — that's usually where a heat pump quote belongs on the table next to the furnace quote.