There is no difference in the motors. It's the control systems that are different.
I believe I said as much. This has nothing to do with the practicality of buying one.
Quoting a salespitch isn't the equivalent of enlightenment. You didn't even know that the thing existed until a few minutes ago. In fact you thought (very wrongly) that you could throw a standard ECM motor into any old unit. You should spend some time googling reliable resources and less time stating your own uneducated opinions.
When you're designing for planned obsolescence (as you unflatteringly suggest the HVAC industry is doing) you sometimes overshoot your goal and create something with a much shorter lifespan than was intended. Again I point to this as an example:
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And being a "late-comer" to the business of designing for planned obsolescence, they are getting it wrong in some cases.
Which is a result of coming up with "new components, ideas and manufacturing techniques over the past few years that don't have the benefit of years of field longevity and durability testing."
All in all, it doesn't say much for your profession when you are so quick to advise a home-owner spend $4k on a new furnace when-ever a $150 motor or $350 controller board burns up (or when a home-owner is considering improving the efficiency of an existing furnace) - especially when you admit that new furnace designs are intended to be inferior to older models.
Multiply all my calculations by three (45 years to recover the expense). As for your actual question, I guess I could get a $600 motor for $200 from someone who was silly enough to attempt this project.
A "standard" ECM motor is an ECM motor that can be used to replace a PSC motor. For the difference between these and the other ECM motors in thier line-up, you can read the GE literature, or watch the videos listed here.
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So what's stopping you from dropping one in? I don't know what you're trying to accomplish, but you seem to be posting a lot of opinions in this and other threads that FWIW have been mostly empirically incorrect. I'm done with this particular training session. Come up with another topic that's a bit more interesting.
I didn't say that it was a conscious descision. Big business is like the rapids and its descision makers like the people riding them-- everyone is holding on for dear life and each is afraid to rock the boat. The business has a life and a will of its own.
The link you keep posting means nothing to me. I've yet to encounter a cracked heat exchanger on one of those models. Not to say they don't exist. If I had some actual details of the complaints I'd be better equipped to discuss that problem. AFAIK, the hearing hasn't even been held yet, so no final decision. I think you're arguing apples and oranges there anyway. How many class action suits are there currently across all industries? How many are the result of failures due to "new and non field tested technology"? As I said, most products are simply not designed with the idea of permanancy in mind. Leaking coils, for instance, have nothing to do with new technology, it has only to do with cheapening of the manufacturing processes and reduction of raw materials.
Hi, Don't even bother. It is DC servorized motor with matching control logic board. High efficiency furnaces are made to take advantage of this variable speed motor. Also they are not as reliable as ordinary motor. If you don't understand how closed loop DC servo motor works..
Intalled, 9 year old TWE Trane was jerking me around on the warranty. I thought I was supposed to have 10yr P/L they said it was 5. It was hot and I went for the $275 regular motor
They don't get warm because in a furnace, they're constantly being cooled by the return airflow hitting them.
In general, from what I've read, a 1/4 to 1/2 hp PSC furnace motor is shedding 150 to 300 watts of heat energy when in use.
At 100% efficiency, 1 hp = 746 watts. Since efficiency falls with motor size, a 1/4 hp motor is at best 50% efficient (see reference below). So it's consuming 373 watts (and shedding 186 watts as heat).
I pay 10.6 cents per kw-hour (about 60% of that is for the electricity itself, and the other 40% is for other charges related to it's delivery to me, as well as gov't taxes). In the summer, I'm running my furnace fan constantly. For the average month, that's 730 hours.
For a motor that's using 373 watts for 730 hours, that's 272 kw-hours. At 10.6 cents per kw-hour, that's $28.83 per month.
Given a usage profile that has me running my fan for 100% during July and August, and tailing off to 20% in February, I project an average monthly usage of 49% for the entire year. That's about 4300 hours, which works out to 1600 kw-hours, which works out to $170.
So if I had a conventional 1/4 hp PSC fan motor (50% efficient) running for 4300 hours per year, I'm going to pay $170 per year.
If the motor was 100% efficient, I'd be paying $85 - saving $85 per year.
At best, for an ECM motor, I'm going to increase my efficiency by 25% (to 75%), so I'm going to save $42 per year.
I'd be saving more if I had a bigger motor, possibly saving $85 per year if this was a comparison using 1/2 hp motors.
So what is the "over-the-counter" cost of a single speed 1/4 or 1/2 hp ECM motor?
Are there any HVAC jobbers here that can answer that?
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Good information really starts on page 13.
Capacitor-start, 4-pole motors have efficiencies from 50% to 65% (1/4,
1/3 and 1/2 hp) with efficiency increasing along with motor hp.
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Most fan usage happens in conjunction with household cooling - not heating.
During the non-heating seasons you are going to be running the fan - sometimes without the A/C going.
I estimate that out of my hypothetical 4300 hours of fan use per year,
1640 hours will happen with the furnace on (about 38% of the time). Where I live, the climate is similar to Detroit, Buffalo or Toronto. Further south, more fan use will be for cooling than my projection of
62%. Based on this, the heat shed by the fan motor is not beneficial or desirable most of the time.
The motor is *inside* the house. And it's placed directly in the circulating air stream. So of course 100% of the heat it's shedding will be transfered to the interior of the living space of the house.
Assuming my savings are between $40 and $80 per year (say, $60) and if the motor costs $180 then it will take 3 years for payback. If the motor is $240, then payback will be 4 years. If the motor is $480, then payback will be 8 years.
The idea of earning interest on the money is nice, except that most likely electricity costs will likely also rise, perhaps in a similar way as your proposed 6%, so the opportunity cost factor will be a wash. Especially given the volitile nature of the stock markets, and declining interest rates. The S&P is up only 4.5% now vs the start of the year.
That was going to be done by yours truly, so that's not a factor.
Everything you're saying is true, but it doesn't mean that fundamentally ECM motors are more efficient regardless in what type of furnace they're used in.
Even if all I do is use it as a constant-speed replacement for a 50% efficient PSC motor, it will use less electricity.
The question is - how much, and what is the over-the-counter cost of a suitable ECM motor (not the HVAC-contractor-installed price).
That is probably true, and along the lines of planned obsolescence that's designed into modern residential HVAC systems.
Don't forget that interest is taxable, not to mention that a 6% savings account is not realistic. Bankrate.com says CD rates are still around 5% but likely to drop soon; a savings account would be below that.
Figure 4% savings account, 28% tax bracket. Interest that you get to keep is $8 times 0.72 a year, $5.76, so the savings would be $19.24 a year and the payback period would be ten years and a few months.
Unless, of course, you're able to take advantage of some program that subsidizes replacing inefficient equipment with efficient equipment. Then the payback would be shorter.
I've worked at and with a lot of companies engaged in all kinds of product design during my career. But I never heard any discussion of planned obsolence, which IMO is largely an urban legend. There is a real tradeoff between what it costs to make, how much you can sell it for, and longevity. In my experience, that is where the tradeoff is made. If you made a product that deliberately lasted 10 years, while it could last 20, it wouldn't be long before a competitor whose product did last 20 would start eating your market share because their product was superior. That's how free markets work.
The typical funace lasts 20 years. Given the cost, that seems a reasonable lifespan. How many customers would be willing to pay say
30% more for one that lasted another 5 years? Or 50% more for one that lasted another 10? Most people don't even plan to be in their homes that long today. Given that the energy situation and technology is constantly evolving, I don't see a problem with the lifespan or value proposition presented by today's furnaces.
"Not designed to last 30 years" is logically equivalent to "Designed to last no more than 30 years". Like I said, it isn't necessarily a concious desicion, but planned obselesence is precisely what it is.
Actually that number has been halved, 15 years being the present value. Some even say 12, depending upon who you ask.
Is the cup half empty, or half full? The point of that being that even though the systems are designed to last no more than 15 years, by taking the stance that they are designed to last at least 15 years you've convinced yourself that that means something different, when, as I said, it is a perfectly equivalent view to planned obsolesence.
The notion of something being planned without it being a conscious decision defies all logic. My main point is that Some Guy referred to planned obsolescence designed into today's products. Which to most people implies there is some specific planning on the part of manufacturers that is different today to make sure the product only lasts a given number of years and then fails so they have to buy another one.
In reality, it's no different today than it ever was. Manufacturer's are competing in a free economy and reacting to it. That includes making trade-offs, as has always been done, about how long it makes sense for a product to last vs how much it costs to build it and how much people are willing to pay for it. If you want to call that planned obsolescence, then we agree, but I think it's a poor choice of words and it's nothing specific to today's products.
Again you're fooling yourself. Evaporator coils, a good example again, are known by the manufacturers to be inferior to older versions. The decision to market them despite this defect is a conscious decision. While the logic may not in fact have been "Well lets design them to be inferior so that they won't last as long", nevertheless that is precisely what they are doing. The objective is profits, and since this practice increases them, that is why they make the desision. Taking these two factors as premises yeilds the conclusion "planned obsolescence". It is a subconcious desicion, but only because they've either rationalized it as something else, or they have fooled themselves into believing that their view isn't equivalent to the latter, when in fact it is PRECISELY equivalent.
The problem is that nothing purchased by *anybody* will be kept for 20 years. That time-frame is too long.
It doesn't matter if it's a car, or roofing shingles, or furnaces, or cell phones or TV's.
Once you get beyond 5 years, it's irrelevant if you could design it to last 10 years or 20 years. It won't matter.
Most home owners putting a new furnace in a house today will not be the same people living in the same house 10 years from now when the furnace breaks down.
The HVAC industry is, and has been, working toward a goal of making sure that just as each owner of a given house will probably have to replace the roof once during the ownership of the house, he will also have to replace the furnace too.
That is a different situation compared to 20 or 30 years ago, when the original furnace installed in a new house back in 1965 - 1980 would easily last 30+ years and the house would pass through the hands of 3 or 4 owners without needing a new furnace.
My parent's house was built in 1955 and they replaced it's original forced-air natural gas furnace about 5 years ago. That's 45 years with the same furnace.
My house was built in 1976 and has it's original natural gas furnace. That's 32 years and counting.
So the HVAC industry is on target at reducing furnace lifespan down to the time frame of the average length of home-ownership - about 7 years. Good for them.
It's a waste of energy and resources for an industry to design such a product with an intentionally short lifespan. It runs counter to the national interests on such scales as energy usage (to build it in the first place) and environmental impact when it's taken to the landfill when it's discarded.
You could make the same argument for other items, like wiring, plumbing, fixtures, the bricks and 2x4 studs in the walls. Why do they need to last 50+ years? Why not design the entire house and every structural and functional element inside it so that it only lasts 10 to 15 years? After all, I'm not going to live in the house for more than 10 years - right?
And then watch the landfills get filled up when all those houses get torn down and rebuilt every 15 or 20 years. That makes real good sense - doesn't it?
That's the crock - that thinking that it costs so much more to make it last another 5 or 10 years.
It's the electronic items that fail and become absurdly (criminally) expensive to fix that forces the removal of a furnace - not because it's suffered an irreparable structural or mechanical failure. And as home owners become dumber and dumber about how things work or how to fix things for themselves, they will be at the mercy of contractors and repair men.
There's very little new in furnace design that wasn't known 50 years ago. There is no constant evolution (at least not in North America). In Japan, they have furnaces with built-in 1 kw electric generators to provide some electrical co-generation that can supplement the electricity supply for the house - and keep the blower running in the case of complete power outages (like what's happening to thousands in the central USA right now).
It is not the same thing at all. Building something poorly or cheaply such that it doesn't last as long as the consumer would like is NOT the same thing as building something with the specific intent that it not last that long.
You are just as dead if you fall off a tall building as if you jump off. That does not mean they are both suicide.
It is not planned obsolecence that is in the design as much as the choice of price vs mean time between failures. If it costs another buck to make something last forever and the product itself will probably be replaced for other reasons in "X" years anyway, they save the buck. The advantage of using a high MTBF part is the number that fail in the first couple percent of the mean and cause a warranty call. Manufacturers try to thread that fine line between a majority of failures happening after the warranty expires and price of the original parts.
That may be true, but it's doesn't qualify as planned obsolescence by my definition. My definition of planned obsolescence is a product deliberately built to only last X years and then require replacement, when it could have been built for the same cost to last longer. Perhaps you should share exactly what you mean by planned obsolescence.
The idea that manufacturers seek to maximize profits is nothing new. It's one of the basic principles of micro-economics. In free markets, everyone tries to maximize profits. It's been going on for thousands of years. When you put something up on EBay, what do you do? How about when you are selling a used car or renting out a house?
Again, my point, is that this process of taking all the market factors into account, and maximizing profits is nothing new, which is what SomeGuy implied. All through history, manufacturers have had to take into account many factors. Those include how much it costs to make, what they can sell it for, and how much people are willing to pay. And how technology may change in an uncertain future, so it may mean that people would prefer to have a less expensive product that can be cost justified in a shorter time frame and then replaced with something newer and better, rather than have a more costly 50 year old product built to last forever.
So, I'd say the fact that today's HVAC systems don't last as long is a reaction to market expectations and consumer preferences, not a focus on planned obsolescence. I wouldn't pay much more for a system that was gonna last 30 yrs or 50 yrs. If you bought a system in 1985 that only lasted 15 years, you may have been better off than if you bought one that lasted 25, because of the energy savings of going to a new unit. Some people might call that planned obsolescene, but I think it's a poor choice of words.
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