Talking to my energy expert (Stacy) she said there are two important features of a furnace- an ECM motor and a power vent, and to go with 95% efficient or better. Armed with these few facts I felt a bit dangerous getting quotes and deciding between them.
My old 80% furnace:
Motors:
Natural gas furnaces typically have one of two types of motors.
a PSC or an ECM
an ECM is more efficiency and allows the furnace to vary how much heat and air it is out putting. All of the ones that I got quotes on had two stages of heat, all on or ~60% on. So that if it is warmer outside it can run at a lower load.
A PSC is either on or off and cannot vary based on needs.
Vents:
The vents have two options: up the chimney or out the wall, the high efficiency go out the wall. Also known as a power vent
Intake:
The last option (other than brand) was with the intake for air to use in combustion. Either the air can come from inside the house or they run a second pipe to the wall and pull outside air.
Pulling air from the outside is suppose to be better because if you pull from the inside of the house you decrease the pressure on the inside which cause more air infiltration from the cold outside into the living space.
So the new furnace is a Ruud, installed by my favorite heating guys, Oak Creek Heating, they are very reasonable for house calls, can come after 6pm, and have helped me out other times. It has a 2-stage ECM, vents out the side of the house, 96% and fit into the old space:
Andrew asked what I thought of the new furnace (shown above) I said it looks fast.
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