How a New Furnace Could Make Your Home Less Comfortable

Selecting the wrong size furnace can make comfort problems worse.

Are you having problems keeping your home nice and toasty as temperatures start to dip? Your first instinct might be to buy a bigger and better furnace. While you may be right in assuming you need to replace your furnace, you must remember this one key fact:

Bigger isn’t always better for a new furnace.

In fact, buying a furnace that is too big (ie designed for a bigger space than you have) can actually make your heating problems worse.

When a furnace has a lot more capacity than you need, it will produce a lot of heat very quickly. This seems great at first. But the problem is that the furnace will also shut off quickly. This is called overcycling or short cycling.

With the furnace turning on and off so quickly, you will get uneven heating in your home. What tends to happen is the area near the thermostat heats up quickly, the system shuts off, and heat never reaches the rest of your home. If your home is well insulated, you might not feel chilly at this point. But if you have a lot of air leaks, you will definitely notice the cold drafts whenever the furnace shuts off.

Besides causing comfort problems, overcycling is very bad for the furnace. It causes extra wear and tear on vital parts, leading to frequent repair needs and eventually premature failure of the system.

How to Choose the Correct Size Furnace

When you decide to replace your furnace, it is essential to work with an experienced HVAC contractor such as US Comfort that understands how to size your furnace correctly.

So how do you know your HVAC contractor knows what they’re talking about?

Have them explain the reasoning behind the furnace size they have recommended for your property.

Any HVAC contractor that simply advises installing the same size furnace you already have or larger should probably be avoided. You never want to assume that your current comfort problems are due to an undersized furnace, or that your current furnace is appropriately sized, without double checking the calculations.

There are several ways to calculate the correct size of furnace for a given property. Typically, it is best to follow the manufacturer’s instructions and/or use their software to calculate the size you need based on the square footage of your home and other considerations.

And don’t forget—there may be other ways to address your comfort problems besides getting a new furnace. Call US Comfort at 800-738-4160 to schedule a visit from one of our techs and receive our expert recommendations as to how to solve your comfort problems for good.