Welcome to Alpine Heating And Cooling’s BLOG. If your looking for the main web site click here, otherwise please enjoy the various posts/projects in our blog. I will admit I am not a writer or even a good speller, but I do enjoy my trade and enjoy posting the various projects we do. I hope there is some useful information somewhere in here for you.
Gary Kirkendall
Its not very often we get to install an American Standard 95% furnace in a manufactured home, mostly in part due to the sizing constraints of the equipment. A typical manufactured home furnace closet is not sized deep enough for the 95% gas furnace.
Manufactured Home Gas Furnace
One of the challenges of this particular project was keeping the air conditioning system. The existing furnace had a built in coil cabinet, the new American Standard 95% does not have this feature. So we had to make a custom AC coil cabinet that also doubled as a transitional base can.
New American Standard 95% Single Stage
Above you see the new American Standard 95% single stage gas furnace. Because we are in a manufactured home both the venting and combustion air has to be piped to the outside, this is optional in a standard home. The condensate line was tapped into the existing AC drain line. We added a Honeywell F100 4″ pleated filter bank for a filtration system and to top it off with also added a Honeywell Vision8000 thermostat.
Even though the furnace sticks out slightly into the utility room I think the payoff in savings and comfort will be worth it.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Both these Trane Air Conditioners have damaged compressors. Both units where shorted to ground and one of the two units was even completely dry of refrigerant.
Dead Trane R-22 Air Conditioners
Fortunately for my customer you can still purchase R22 air conditioners, but the units must come dry with no refrigerant in them, otherwise they would have had to either just replace the compressors or completely replace both the indoor and outdoor equipment with R410a equipment. This would have been a very costly way to go for my customer.
New American Standard dry R22 AC Units
The new American Standard R22 units above came with no refrigerant but charged with nitrogen instead. We simply had to recover the refrigerant out of one of the existing units, set the new units, braze in, and then pressure test the entire system with nitrogen. Once the test was over we pumped down both systems below 500 microns then charged with R22. We did add filter driers as well as sight glasses to complete the project.
New R22 American Standard AC Units On Roof
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Our customer felt it was time to replace his existing Trane 80% furnace for something more efficient that also could make his home more comfortable for his family.
Trane 80% gas furnace.
The new American Standard (manufacture of Trane) 95% fully modulating gas furnace is in my opinion the best furnace you can purchase in the industry today. Even though my favorite to install is the American Standard 95% 2 stage variable furnace, the fully modulating model is very impressive and quickly growing on me.
American Standard fully modulating 95% gas furnace.
Even though you can not tell the physical differences between the two models you can defiantly tell the difference in performance. American Standard has a fully modulating gas valve with a variable speed blower. The communicating thermostat makes less than 1% adjustments in the gas valve to maintain setpoint and has real time adaptive intelligence. No more under or over shooting the thermostats setpoint…. makes for a very comfortable heating system.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Its not very often, but it does happen. A furnace installed in the wrong direction, well at least in my opinion its facing the wrong direction.
Rheem furnace facing wrong direction
Here you see a RHEEM 80% gas furnace facing into the garage. As you can see theres a tool box pushed up against the front of the furnace which makes it very tough to change a filter, never mind servicing.
New American Standard 95% 2 stage variable speed furnace.
As you can see above we installed the new American Standard 95% 2 stage variable speed gas furnace 180 degrees from where it was originally. Giving the home owner and service technician easy access. We also added a Honeywell F100 filter bank into the return system for even better filtration system.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
This is proberly one of the easiest types of furnace replacements there is, a 80% Carrier to a 80% American Standard.
Carrier 80% gas furnace
Basically the same physical size units, no drain or PVC connections to worry about, just reconnecting the venting and gas. The American Standard 80% furnaces are perfect for smaller homes. And usually fits the budget.
80% American Standard gas furnace.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Another Arcoaire 90% gas furnace goes to the scrap yard as a new American Standard 95% single stage takes its place.
Arcoaire 90% gas furnace.
Not only is the new American Standard 95% single stage furnace shorter, it is also has a smaller foot print. All we simply had to was to make and install a small transition to attach to the existing return ducting and then blank off a small portion on the supply base can.
95% single stage gas furnace.
Seeing how the existing furnace was a 90% efficient model we where able to utilize the existing PVC venting as well as the existing drain line.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
The older HEIL 90% gas furnace has lived its life. The exchanger is cracked and the sword burners are shot, I would say the customer got the life out of this furnace.
Heil 90% Furnace
I don’t have a lot of experience with HEIL, being that there is very few of them installed in our area Im thinking it was more than likely a 2nd line of equipment for some heating company.
95% Single Stage American Standard furnace
Above is the American Standard 95% Single Stage furnace. Even though my favorite furnace is the American Standard 2 Stage Variable Speed in this case (because of ducting and the age of the home) I recommended the single stage.
As you can see the new furnace has the same footprint as the HEIL, I simply had to make an extension from the new furnace to the existing filter system. The existing 2″ PVC had to be increased to 3″ then we reconnected up to the existing gas and drain.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Almost every Munchkin boiler we come across has a history of problems. This particular Munchkin just started to have issues … my customer elected not to go down the costly repair route that these boilers are famous for.
Existing Munchkin Boiler
Above you can see the Munchkin boiler. The idea behind this boiler is to flash heat the water, by doing so you have a very small compact unit. BUT in my opinion its this compact design that can led to serious issues, like clogging of the burn chamber that can cause exchanger failure.
New Burnham ECS Boiler
The new Burnham ECS boiler is a cast iron boiler with optional outdoor reset, perfect for this application. The Burnham boiler efficiency is a little less than the Munchkin but I feel is a more reliable, will last a lot longer and with fewer repair bills.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
My newest customers just moved here from Florida only to find out both of their Payne 80% furnaces have cracked heat exchangers. This is not uncommon, in fact its rare not to find cracks in the heat exchangers of this particular brand/model of furnace.
Existing Payne 80% Gas Furnace.
The 2nd floor Payne 80% Furnace was an up-flow furnace. Meaning it blows the hot air upward into the attic where the heated air is delivered through ducts overhead into each the rooms.
American Standard 95% variable speed 2 stage
As you can see above the new American Standard 95% 2 stage Variable speed furnace has a little larger foot print, some simple transitions helped us slip the new furnace right into place. A condensate pump was added to remove condensation and the venting changed to PVC.
1st Floor Payne 80% furnace
The 1st floor Payne 80% furnace was your typical down-flow furnace, blowing the hot air downward into the crawl space, then ducted to floor registers through out the home.
1st Floor American Standard 95% Variable 2 Stage
The new American Standard 95% 2 Stage Variable furnace again was a larger foot print, but a simple transition and new basecan made it very easy to slip into place. The venting changed to PVC and condensate line ran into the existing drain system.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
This older Rheem 80% gas furnace was starting to cost my customer some serious money, money my customer would rather invest in to a new furnace.
Existing Rheem gas furnace
And like most standard 80% furnaces installed during this time frame there is no real access to the filters. The customer has to open the furnace and reach up in to the ducting to replace them.
An American Standard 80% Furnace.
The new American Standard 80% furnace has the exact foot print as the Rheem, this makes very easy for replacement. I added a Honeywell F100 filter bank for easier access and better filtration. The F100 also is convertible to the F300 if their looking for even better filtration down the road.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
