smallest unit footprint forced air furnace

ed wallace

are you aware sears is having a problem when it comes to sevicing thier products? where are you located? please get and install a co detector for your own protection

julienne

smallest footprint forced air unit

I have had out Sears for a free estimate, which is really a hard sell-sign right here- we want to replace our forced air furnace but wonder is there is anything smaller, yes we need about a 80,000 to 90,000 unit, but the footprint 24X26X40 is the same as our 20 year old unit, haven't anyone come up with a smaller unit? the technologies on all our other home units have certainly improved, what about my gas forced air furnace?

Mike T., Swampeast MO

Air holds very little heat so you have to heat a LOT of it. Air from the furnace is also heated within a rather narrow range to avoid air that's too hot or too cold for safety/comfort. It must also be moved within a fairly narrow range of velocity to ensure sufficient "throw" from the registers but not so fast as to produce drafts.

What all this means is that for a given output, the area of the supply and return connections is likely to stay very similar reardless of how the air is actually heated.

While boilers have certainly gotten much smaller over the decades, I don't believe such is possible for forced air furnaces. Even if all of the "guts" of the furnace could be made much smaller, the cabinet itself has to stay a certain size to allow sufficient airflow.