Energy Audit Furnace To Buy or Not To Buy

[explore1000]

I'm up for a new furnace and doing my research. I'm being told a lot of pros and cons about upgrading now, but this one response from one of my friends has me stumped: I was told the energy audit has significantly inflated the cost of furnaces installations over the past two years and if I wait until next year the prices will drop and I'll actually walk out with a better deal. I've tried to do some research online to get some ballpark prices of the cost of just the furnaces for brand names and its almost impossible... There are lots of people asking the same question I am but its impossible to find any answers.

One of the big brands I did find prices for online:

Online: Cost of 96% Efficiency furnace: $2000 Estimated Quote on install (per a furnace installer forum member) $600 = Total with taxes should be $2938.00

the lowest in-home quote I got: $4500.00-$250(OPA Rebate)-$790(Fed Rebate) = $3460

Potential Inflation of $522?


Is there any merit to this?

[Saibot]

U know why in-home quotes suck?

They gotta pay the guy to go to ur house lol. The guys that come in barely know what they're doing half the time. I had a guy come, didnt even look downstairs.. sat at my kitchen table and gave me a price.

Send me a PM ill refer you to the company i dealt with.

[MacGyver]

Welcome to RFD, you should really enter a location in your profile. There may be another member in your area that can recommend a good installer. I know a good guy in Ottawa who will thoroughly examine your home before preparing a quote, but that doesn't help if you don't live there.

[explore1000]

Welcome to RFD, you should really enter a location in your profile. There may be another member in your area that can recommend a good installer. I know a good guy in Ottawa who will thoroughly examine your home before preparing a quote, but that doesn't help if you don't live there.

I got all excited about joining! I'm in Toronto.

I agree, the in home quotes were 5% review and 95% selling pitches. They didn't even look at the A/C (I want to replace as well) or for the backyard setup. I guess its good cause if they did the quote would have been higher.

One sales guy did take the time to mention some of the configurations that need to be done when installing A/C's and furnaces. One was a "Super Heat / Sub Cool" test that is done on the A/C. Never heard of that before, but he mentioned 90% of furnance & a/c installs aren't optimized for the homes their installed in, which leads to premature wear & tear of the units. He was the only guy who mentioned it out of the 5 quotes I got. This whole install process makes me nervous.