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So we’re going to talk about furnaces and we’ll I guess you get asked this a lot, so how long do they last?
David: O.K. well it’s a pretty simple answer, we could do a sort of short video and say they’re about 25 years, that’s the word that kind of gets thrown around but you know I looked at it a little bit more to why they last as long as they last, you know, which furnaces last a little bit longer and also how you can make it last longer than it should, yeah, so short and sweet answer, you know most furnaces, the number you’re going to hear is around 25 years and that’s not a hard and fast rule, it’s like saying a car only last for a certain amount of kilometers. It’s not really fair because there are so many factors at play and to illustrate my point I’m in a house here that was built around 1984, 1985 and we’re actually looking at a 30 year old, almost a 30 year old furnace here. This is an old Airco furnace, I’ve got the panel right here, I think this colour is illegal now but this was a BC company or a Canadian company, the manufacturer and they eventually went out of business but they made some really good quality furnaces. So this is the kind of thing we come across in our home inspections we’re sort of going, it’s an older furnace but this is a pretty well respected make and they have the tendency to go a lot longer than 25 years and we see this a lot in older homes. I’ve gone into houses from 1965 with an original furnace and the furnace was still working. One of the big things is don’t think about it like, 25 years and I have to replace my furnace, you know the benefits you may get are your efficiency might go up a little bit. This furnace here is about 80 percent efficient, a little bit less than that maybe, you know probably in the 75 to 80 percent range; a brand new furnace right now you can get around 98 percent efficient so that’s usually what prompts somebody to replace a furnace, you get some sort of incentive or it’s loud, I hear that a lot too, the furnace is getting really loud or I want to save some money or I have a friend who installs furnaces and he will be able to put in a brand new high efficiency furnace for me but generally you’re going to get the 25 year turnaround. I like to say 25 or more with good maintenance.
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