An HVAC company I’ve used for my various residences and the house I rent out replaced the condenser on our air conditioner. It quit working two weeks later, the coils being encased in ice. I’ve had this happen in other houses, and ran the fan with the A/C off until the ice melted, and all was well. They added two pounds of refrigerant for $150.00 I wonder if the refrigerant leaked when they replaced t he condenser. At any rate, they declared the furnace dangerous, and gave me a “solid quote” of $1650.00 to replace it.
Do these guys seem competent, and is that a reasonable quote?
$1650, beginning to end, parts and labor, permits, electrician, that’s the whole cost, no surprises (like an electrician), they’re not going to ding you an extra $50 to rebuild the plenum or $100 for an electrician or slap the permits on top of the $1650.
If you can write them a check for $1650 and have a new furnace installed…yeah, it sounds fair based on knowing nothing at all about your situation. That is, I don’t know what kind of furnace you’re getting, if they’re removing the old one, how much labor is in your area etc etc etc.
Two things though. 1) Check to see if they can just replace the cracked heat exchange since that’s likely what’s making it ‘dangerous’ and 2)See if there’s a recall on it from the manufacturer. In which case you might be able to get the new part or the entire furnace for just the labor (but the HVAC people should have checked for that already).
Also, if you’re out of the heating season, you’ve got until fall to deal with this, you don’t have to rush.
Almost 60 years is pretty old. Is it an oil furnace? If that’s the case, I know nothing at all about those. I was just assuming this was a 10-20 year old gas fired furnace with a cracked heat exchanged.
I’m going to guess no one has a current recall out on a 1958 model anything and parts are probably pretty hard to find. Besides, I’ll bet upgrading it will save you the $1650 in the next 5-10 heating seasons.
Natural gas. Arkla UFA-100N, 100,000 BTU, Bonnet 86,000, whatever a bonnet is.
Arkansas Louisiana Gas was a natural gas company when I was a kid. Apparently they were still making gas grills in the 1970s, but I can’t Google any other reference to them. It is awfully clean inside, just some powdery rust; the pilot control looks new.
We inherited the house from my Wife’s parents. He took care of things, we haven’t used up the box of filters he kept downstairs.