making gas furnace more efficient trick?

I heard that adjusting the gas valve on my standard natural gas furnace will make it more efficient. By partially closing the gas valve reduces the flame. Although the furnace would run longer, the flue temp is reduced meaning lower heat loss and improvement in efficiency.

An analogy is like driving a car the same distance once fast and once slow. When driving slower, it obviously will take longer, the engine is on longer, yet fuel usage is less.

I have no way to verify if this is BS or not.

Reply to
JohnR66
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Please do not mess with your furnace. They are designed to run at a certain gas pressure. Lowering the T-stat is a lot safer.

Reply to
Mikepier

Yup and while not a 'gas man' turning it down might risk the furnace not coming on when it should. And why would running the furnace slower save fuel anyway?

Just suppose you were to run hot water into a pail on a cool day. Inevitably the pail would lose a little bit of heat while you were filling it; maybe taking a minute or so to fill the pail with hot water, right?

Then suppose you were to set the tap to very low or even just a drip of hot water every second or so?

At the end of maybe an hour the pail might be partially filled and the water would have lost it's heat anyway.

After all it's heat you are trying to make, to heat the house!

A certain amount of gas or oil or wood etc. can be burned to make a certain amount heat (depending on the efficiency of the furnace etc.) hard to see that fiddling around with the gas/oil supply would make the furnace any more efficient. In fact maybe make it unsafe!

It also used to be said that for a furnace/heating system to be most effective it should be just big enough and be adjusted so that it runs almost continuously (i.e. at highest efficiency cos it's not cycling and cutting in and out heating up and cooling down as often), during the coldest weather.

Don't think the car analogy is good one.

Reply to
terry

my best friend throttled his back last winter, and had no troubles.

wouldnt recommend this for a direct vent 90+ type.

his furnace would occasionally gop boom on start up, throttled back it didnt but ran longer.

he cleaned the burners this summer they were clogged near pilot light, no more boom explosions

Reply to
hallerb

Gee, unless the source of this information is an Engineer, and a H & C mechanical engineer at that, I would treat that wild donkey guess with a grain of salt.

Reducing Flue temp will not make your furnace more efficient. Improved design of the heat exchanger will. Aside: your furnace's gas burners are inside a 'firebox' which keeps the carbon gas in the flue and not in the house. The firebox has the house air blown around the outside which picks up the heat. The better the design of the heat transfer from the firebox to the air, the more efficient the furnace will be in heating your home. Heat transfer also has to do with the velocity of the air, the metal used (better transfer metal will not last as long), and of course the temperature inside the firebox. ( I may have forgotten something!)

Replacing the pilot light with an electric gas flame starter (like propane outdoor grills have) will also save money.

Reply to
Phil Again

BS. To make a gas furnace more efficient you must either get more BTU's out of a fixed amount of gas or improve the heat transfer from the flame to the house. More efficient furnaces have lower flue temps not because of lower flame temps, but because more heat is transferred to the house. To measure efficiency compare the flue temp to the duct temp.

Simply lowering the flue temp will also lower the duct temp.

Reply to
Michael Dobony

It could help if ducts are restrictive and exchanger temp is to high, mine was and I cut down on the gas shutoff valve to lower exchanger temp to within spec. Test the temp above the exchanger and find out what is specified and lower it to the low end of the design temp. To high a temp also lowers exchanger life by many years.

Reply to
ransley

Once you've got that figured out move on to your car---must be a way to reduce the gas flow so that the car will run slower no matter how hard you step on the gas pedal. You'll get where you're going, will take longer and you will save on fuel. At least, if done right, (like putting a wooden block under the gas pedal) the engine won't blow up---can't say the same for your furnace. MLD

Reply to
MLD

Sure ways to help are a clean exchanger, proper burning flame, sealed insulated ducts.

Reply to
ransley

Lower flue temp is how high efficiency furnaces get their efficiency. Some ammount of temperature is needed. On the older furnaces to create the thermal lift to get the flue gasses out of the house. In moderately newer ones, to keep the flue gasses from condensing in the chimney. The newest furnaces with PVC vents, the flue gasses are cold already.

I predict that if you turn down the gas, y ou'll have other problems which will more than use up your fuel savings.

Using your car analogy. You save 14% of the gasoline bill. However, by driving slowly, the exhaust doesn't blow the noxious chemicals out of the tail pipe. The corrosive combusion products eat up your exhaust system, and you have to replace all the pipes. Further, the carbon monoxide isn't blown out of the car. Your family develops flu like symptoms, and turns cherry red. You are home from work for a week with killer head aches and two of your children die from monoxide.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

You think some internet legend is smarter than the engineers who design furnaces? Not likely.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Your friend doesn't have a furnace company do the annual maintenance on his furnace. He thinks he's competent to tell you that "no problems" after adjusting settings?

Please take out a life insurance policy on his family, and put me as the beneficiary.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Hi, Your friend is an IDIOT!

Reply to
Tony Hwang

Last winter I lowered my thermostat everytime they told me to do so on tv. I saved about $850 on my gas bill. However, my wife and two of our children died from from freezing to death. Myself and my one surviving child ran up $235,000.00 in medical and hospital bills after we were hauled away by an ambulance. I am now permanently disabled since they had to remove both my legs which had frozen, and my son will never be able to reproduce, or use his fingerless hands as a result of the cold.

Larry

Reply to
larryhugo

Don't go fiddling with your furnace. If you want it at maximum efficiency have a pro come in and clean the unit. Make sure that there is enough fresh air coming into the furnace area for good combustion and for air flow up the chimney.

Reply to
John Grabowski

well he has multiple engineering degrees, and his best friend has a PHD in mechanical engineering

interestingly he had a service company out who just said replace furnace. while another friend a retired HVAC instructor said clean burners

my buddy doesnt believe a new furnace will save him money. I replaced our furnace by spring the proof will be in equitable gas bills:)

Incidently my buddy who cleaned his furnace converted both his vehicles to compressed natural gas in the 70s and they still run on it today.

not only did he design and build the system his machine shop and foundry produced nearly all the parts.......

he is a retired teacher.....his effective price per gallon is about 2 bucks, natural gas has nerarly doiubled in cost in the last 2 years: (...

NEXT

Reply to
hallerb

But your friend likely understands what he is doing and the various reasons why it may or may not be a good idea for someone else since he can babysit the project and observe the results.

You might want to point your buddy in the direction of flame modulation. Simply lowering the burner output is very simplistic and may or may not work depending on how well matched the burner output is to the highest heat loss.

Reply to
George

This sounds like BS to me, although I do remember hearing something once about adjusting the gas/air mixture for more efficient combustion. I have no idea whether the mixture is actually adjustable on a furnace. I know it is on my old gas stove.

Reply to
Abe

Ok, Hallerb, you ding dong. Listen up before you kill someone. You, your ideas and your nutty Engineer crap is so full of holes it isnt funny. This is a real simple checkout if you dont believe it. A furnace is designed to operate within a certain range. Next time you can, get your hands on a combustion efficiency analyzer. Put it in the flue. On a 90% furnace just put it in the outlet pvc pipe. On a standard furnace, just stick the probe in the metal flue. Now, start cranking the gas pressure down and watch the CO reading (thats carbon monoxide) go off the chart. Just for giggles, you can even turn the gas pressure way up and get the same effect. In short, the burner was designed to burn properly within a certain range. SO, if you are truley bent on killing people, just keep popping off with your silly EE ideas. Bubba

Reply to
Bubba

..

Oh really, there is a maximum stated temp the exchanger is designed for and cutting gas to be within the range is normal to do. How is his idea unsafe, how can he kill anyone, I guess down south yur ways you exhaust into the basement because chimneys are too expensive. Running at the low end of the exchangers temp is how I set mine up since my hack pro was to lazy to check it. So are burners different on Modulating gas valves, no, its just less gas. The idea has merit to check what your temp is to be sure it is within the specified range, and within the "range" is fine.

Reply to
ransley

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