displacedyankee
05-14-2008, 03:37 PM
Hey everyone, I just found this site, so forgive me if I break any forum rules. The wife and I recently re-located to Colorado. We have a story and a halk, brick home built in the late 1950's. All the windows have just been replaced, and i've buttoned the house up as much as I can in it's current state, including blowing in about 4 inches of insulation into the attic. We now need to replace the 20+ year old Lennox furnace. I had 2 contractors give estimates. The first contractor gave a bid for a Lennox Elite Series G61V variable speed, 2 stage furnace, and a Lennox Elite XP14 heat pump. The second contractor gave a quote for a York Affinity high efficiency furnace. He also said the equipment the Lennox dealer wants to install would be overkill, that a heat pump wouldn't be needed with that Lennox furnace. He says the 2 stage and variable speed functions are designed to allow the furnace to run at a lower speed, and with lower fuel consumption when the temperature is mild outside, basically in the range where a heat pump would run. He says the furnace will always run on high stage with a heat pump. Who is telling me the truth here? I like both dealers, and really like the potential energy savings with the Lennox setup, however I don't want to pay a lot of money for a system only to find out it was overkill. Thanks in advance for any advice.