Rheem/Rhuud
More heat for your money, high reliability, few repairs
One of the world's leading manufacturers of central heating and cooling products, Rheem distributes a full line of residential and commercial products globally.
Rheem was established in the mid-1920s when brothers Richard and Donald Rheem acquired a galvanizing plant in San Francisco, California. They opened another plant near Los Angeles a decade later to start manufacturing water heaters. By 1936, Rheem had coast to coast distribution. During the 1940s and 1950s, it increased its product line to include space heating units for homes, oil furnaces and air conditioners.
Rheem now has a full line of gas furnaces, oil furnaces, heat pumps, as well as an extensive line of cooling equipment. Their oil furnaces achieve efficiencies as high as 82% without using condensing technology or other multi-step efficiency enhancing techniques which shorten the lifespan of the system and increase maintenance costs.
The ROPD (Downflow/Horizontal) and ROBD (Upflow/Vertical) series of oil furnaces offer 82% and 81% efficiencies respectively, with price tags starting as low as approximately $1,300. Such a system could be an excellent purchase if you are in a rural area or interested in system longevity more than efficiency.
In consumer reviews, Rheem has emerged as one of the most reliable and least repair-prone furnace manufacturers available. Rheem's Classic 90 Series achieves 95% AFUE and has two different stages, allowing it to run at 70% of full output on cool days or 100% output for the coldest winter nights. The heat exchangers in all of Rheem's furnaces come with a minimum 20-year warranty, and many of them come with a limited lifetime warranty on this component. Given that the heat exchanger is the most expensive component in a furnace system, it certainly says something about their confidence.
The Classic 90 series is priced starting around $1,500 for a 45,000 btu unit, which is the smallest they offer in this model range. Most homes have a slightly larger furnace unit, starting at around 60,000 btu. As always, it's important to remember that this is an approximate price, not including taxes, fees, labor, or any miscellaneous installation hardware.
