Well, I decided to bite the bullet and get our really old, inefficient gas furnace yanked out in favor of a new-tech furnace.  We are redoing our basement and it's a great time to remove the old clunker (literally) and move into the 21st century.  I'm excited!  I decided to make this a project for my blog (are you REALLY surprised?) and will report on the changes in my bills and air quality. 

I settled on letting a highly reputable company handle the install - UGI, our regional gas provider, who does sales and service of gas heating and AC systems.  The estimator, a Margaret Wenger, came out yesterday to price my replacement. The price came in at $3,320 for a new furnace, AC coil and related work (which is fairly heavy as old as my system is).  I was happy knowing what I know about system prices, but to get a second opinion I called my friend Steve Iseman, who is an analyst for Metropolitan Edison over in York County.  He agreed that the price was good, so away we went!

The unit I am getting is an EnergiAir GMH95, which is made by Goodman Manufacturing for UGI, who renames it.  It's a 95% AFUE efficient unit (wow!) with 2 stage operation and multispeed functionality.  Pretty cool (pardon the pun).  The 2 stage feature is neat - the blower slows down as the load on the unit decreases, to save energy.

One interesting thing came up that I hadn't planned for - UGI offers the "Keystone Help" financing program for it's energy-efficient upgrades.  The 95% efficiency units qualify.  The program is an up-to-10 year financing term for only 8.99%.  It can go to 6.99% in certain cases of reduced income.  As an example, a $2,500 loan would be $32 per month for 10 years.  There is no prepayment penalty.  All this is underwritten by the PA Treasury Department.

I was interested.  I'm going to do the financing so I can write about how it works for the benefit of my readers who are considering an energy-efficient upgrade and can't pay in full.  This could be great for the bigger-ticket items like PV solar or Geothermal.

The install date is the 18th, so I'll give an update then!