Our furnace is smarter than we are

Okay, I lied. I forgot I wanted to write a post about our new furnace before my final wrapping-up post. You may recall all the angst I went through in selecting a humdifier. We opted for a high-end, combination high-efficiency gas furnace heat-pump unit. The HVAC guys explained it to me, but I will confess to being a little fuzzy on the details. Apparently this model is supposed to be quite good for the environment (we'll get some kind of tax credit next spring for it), and inexpensive to run to boot. When the weather is moderate, the heat pump works. Then once the outside temperature gets below a certain point, the gas furnace kicks in.

The unit also has a variable speed motor, which the HVAC guys assured me was a Good Thing. Apparently it revs up and down slowly, rather than gusting out blasts of hot or cold air at one speed. I will take their word that it is a desirable feature (something about saving on power costs and being easier on the furnace motor), but I can tell you that hubby Jonathan is less than thrilled with this feature. I think I have mentioned before his lovable quirk for getting up on cold mornings, cranking up our other gas furnace, and then lying on the carpet next to the floor vent and warming up next to the blasts of warm air. Of course, he can still do this in other parts of the house, so it's not a deal-breaker.

We had an electronic air cleaner installed on it, and the HVAC guy explained that we should run the furnace on "circ" mode all the time, in which the fan kicks in roughly 30% of the time to move the air through the cleaning system. He said it should only cost about 17 cents a day to do this, but the improvement in air quality is highly worth it. As an added benefit, I think it means we run the cooling part of the unit much less, too, because just having the air blowing adds to our comfort level.

Everyone who has seen the unit who knows something about HVAC systems assures us that this is a Very Good Furnace. The guy who installed it kept raving about it and told us, "This furnace will still be serving y'all long after I'm gone from the planet." Okay, so maybe this wasn't the most reassuring comment in the world given that he looked 70 or 75 if he was a day. So I cast him a worried look and inquired, as delicately as I could manage, about the state of his health, and then I asked if--more to the point--the furnace would outlast me. He harrumphed a bit and allowed as he couldn't say because he didn't know how old I was.

And, after all that angst, I am delighted to report that the TrueSteam humidifier has been working wonderfully. Now that it's summer, we don't need humidification at all (quite the opposite), but it did a terrific job of maintaining the desired humidity level when we first got it up and running in winter. Even during the months when we were finishing up the renovation and thus kept the thermostat very very low in the addition, the TrueSteam was still able to keep the humidity at the target level of 40%... even when it was in the 20s outside.

I'm so happy with it, in fact, that we'll probably replace our old and not so effective humidifier on our other unit next winter. :)

Both the humidifier and furnace/ac are controlled with a top of the line programmable thermostat, the Honeywell IAQ system. The instruction manual for the thermostat is an intimidating thick booklet. The thermostat has a touch screen control panel, rather than the little round dial that I am used to with our other thermostats. There's several screens of commands you can scroll through, and I still haven't figured it all out. You can program this thing literally to the minute, with a different schedule every day if you want. I am embarrassed to admit that we turned off the scheduling feature and instead just manually turn it on/off when we want it. I kinda miss the round dial, to tell you the truth. ;-)

...but the system is still pretty crafty. It senses the outside temperature and simply will not allow you to turn on the gas furnace heat if the temperature is too high, nor will it allow you to turn on air conditioning if it's too cool outside. I'm sure this is good for cost-control and environmental reasons, but it makes me a little uneasy to think that my furnace knows what's best for me and will overrule my commands if it doesn't agree with it.

I think I'll call it "Hal."