Your Guide to Furnaces

Understand all of your options before shopping

Furnaces are almost a necessary evil. You need one to heat your house; the manufacturers are fairly elusive regarding features, maintenance, and overall cost; and it’s a daunting task to shop for one, especially if you’re buying your first furnace.

There are almost too many options for a novice home owner. Furnaces are available with different energy sources, such as natural gas, wood, fuel oil, corn or other pellet stoves, and even recently-developed solar heating choices. For each of these sources, there are various technologies to be used and different techniques to spread the heat; these can include water-based radiant heating systems or forced air systems, as well as different kinds of burner or boiler chambers. Should you buy a condenser-based furnace? What does "high efficiency" really mean to you? How safe is a natural gas/oil/wood furnace? Will it really be as easy and convenient to use as the manufacturer’s brochures claim? We’re here to answer all of these questions.

Guide 2 Furnaces hopes to help you find answers to all of your furnace-related questions. Here you’ll find information on all aspects of home heating from brand profiles to available fuel types to a full evaluation of specific furnace models.

What's more, Guide 2 Furnaces is objective and unbiased. We’re not manufacturers, vendors, contractors, or marketers. We’re not a government agency. We're consumers just like you. We’ve researched furnaces, studied the available options closely and gathered as much information as possible about them.

We’ve included comparisons of major brands of furnaces to help you see what other homeowners think of their furnace equipment, the service they’ve received from a given manufacturer, as well as the longevity and ease of maintenance of the furnace equipment.

We also offer advice on different fuel sources, heat distribution systems, and energy efficiency ratings to help you make sense of all the new words and numbers involved in upgrading or installing a furnace or buying one for the first time.

As you read, remember:

• We don’t sell furnaces. If you want to buy a furnace, click on some of our many sponsored links – they’re sure to help you find the right furnace.
• We’re not interested in pushing a particular brand or product. We do review some of the leading choices in each category, but all the final decisions belong to you.
• We have no particular commitment to environmentalism and “going green” or to resisting these practices. We have done our best to outline the economic and environmental benefits of each piece of equipment discussed in the guide.