Red Rock Mechanical, LLC Blog: Archive for December, 2017

Is Your Electric Furnace Not Up to the Task?

Tuesday, December 26th, 2017

cold-sweater-manThere’s a good reason natural gas furnaces are common for heating in Burlington, VT: they have immense heat output that can overcome even the deepest cold days. And we have quite a few super-cold days in Vermont and New York! A gas furnace not only effectively warms up a house, it also saves money since natural gas costs less to use than electricity.

Natural gas, however, isn’t available to all homes in our area. Some homeowners prefer not to use it even if it is available because of safety concerns. For those homes, the electric furnace is always an option—and it can be an effective option as well.

But this winter, are you finding your house is colder than normal, even when you have the furnace turned up all the way? The electric furnace may not be up to its job. Let’s find out why.

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The More You Know: Boilers Rarely “Boil” Today

Monday, December 11th, 2017

large-boilerFurnaces have a long history as residential heating systems. After all, the first fireplaces were basically the original furnaces, and ever since people started to construct pipes connected to stoves to distribute heat to other parts of a building, furnaces have been the most common kind of central heating system.

But the boiler has a long history as well. Boilers didn’t become prominent in homes and commercial buildings until much later than furnaces, but they’ve been common since the 19th century. Boilers offer a number of excellent advantages that have kept them around for all those decades: energy-saving performance, clean heat that doesn’t blow around dust, and a toasty warm feeling that people often prefer to the forced-air comfort that comes from a furnace.

Boilers have changed immensely since their first introduction, of course. Perhaps the biggest change of all is that most boilers today don’t actually boil anything, but instead use hydronic power.

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