New (house) heating system... is this a good/great deal?

Dan Musicant · 2011-07-03T15:51:20+00:00

I get an unsolicited call around a month ago and it's a woman who saysthey are with a program that might install a heater in my house(Berkeley, CA). She didn't say that exactly, but that's where theconversation went because that's what I need. The heater in my almost2000 square foot two story 101 year old house was a floor heater that'sbeen disconnected and in the crawl space under the house, rusting sinceI moved in here in 1983. I bought the house (was renting with othersbefore) in 2000.I'm very low income right now and have qualified for a few assistanceprograms but when contacted in the past I didn't qualify for helpputting in a heating system because mine wasn't connected andfunctioning. I explained this to the woman but she seemed to think itdidn't matter. She makes an appointment for a guy to come over and checkout the house.The appointment was yesterday and the guy was nice as hell, worked up aplan in a matter of 1/2 hour - 45 minutes and I asked him if I couldhave a few days to make up my mind. He'd said there was a time limit anda limit on the number of rebates that would be issued, so he'd made itsound like I better act fast (yes, a common tactic and I don't know howfor real this was). I asked him if he could call me Tuesday afternoon orWednesday (today's Sunday).The old heating system sent up heat through a grate in the floor, AFAIKbeing only a single one in the center of the downstairs in the livingroom.This guy asked me if there was any ducting or way to send ducts up tothe 2nd floor. If not, he said I'd either have to have just one heater(heat gets to the 2nd floor by rising up the staircases, there being onein front and one in back) or have 2 heaters, one in the crawl space andthe other in the attic. Without bothering to go up into the attic orhave a close look to see if ducting is possible from the crawl space tothe 2nd floor, he decides it's not feasible (he may be right in that,but I'm not at all sure), he tells me if I want other than heat...

Jul 03, 2011 41 Replies

Rate this thread:

John Weiss 15 years ago

I don't know that there are any gas-fired furnaces at the 95%+ efficiency rating that are not multi-stage. The one in my old house was 3-stage, and my new one has a 3-stage fan with a true variable burner.

Vote