Direct Vent Furnace - A Convenient, Efficient, Safer Home Heating System
Also called condensing or high efficiency furnaces, a direct vent furnace is a great addition to your home. As the name implies it can pay for itself back in lower utility bills over time
So where does this direct vent furnace heating system get its various names? The names derive from the fact that this type of heating system allows the air for use in the combustion chamber to be drawn from outside the home directly and then the exhaust gases are directly vented out the sidewall of your home. This means no exhaust venting needs to be set up through the roof and possibly taken through another story of the house if your house is more than one story high.
There are many reasons for the overwhelming popularity of this system. One, is that they carry a efficiency rating of 80 percent or better. This gives it the high efficiency furnace title.
Another, is that you have the convenience of placing them anywhere in the home that you wish as long as it is very near an outside wall. In fact, they can be as far away as 4 feet from one of these walls and still work correctly. As the heating system works on air flow this causes the four foot limitation. But it does not even require being near an exhaust vent.
But one of the main features is the way that they utilize the air for work. An efficient unit comes with two pipes. One pulls air from the outside, runs it through the system and vents the exhaust from combustion out the other pipe.
But a furnace that is more inefficient uses a whole different technique. It pulls air from within the home. This creates a sucking motion that creates drafts from windows, doors, and any tiny crevasse that you could find in the structure and vents it outside via the chimney. Then what you have is a house full of cold air in the winter that now has to be heated even more to get it to a comfortable temperature.
Not only this but that air flow pattern creates a potential for back draft. If the exhaust fumes, of which carbon monoxide is one, backwashes into your home, you have a recipe for disaster. Therefore using a direct vent furnace where the fumes nor the air used in this closed system come into contact with your home's air supply, makes for a much safer heater.
Using a direct vent furnace is a great way to efficiently heat your home without doing unnecessary extra work. If that isn't enough incentive, you may be eligible for a number of discounts through your homeowners insurance, or government rebate program, for upgrading your system to a much safer one.
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