Furnaces use natural gas or propane burners to heat your building. These burners occupy the top half of the furnace. The bottom half is the blower which distributes heated or cooled air throughout your building. When considering installing a new furnace or replacing your existing unit, there are three important items that needs to be considered. The burner capacity, blower capacity, and energy efficiency.
The industry standard for determining the burner capacity needed for the Central Texas climate is to maintain an inside temperature of 70 degrees when the outside temperature is 30 degrees. Your preference may vary. Furnace burners do this by adding the necessary amount of heat (BTUs) into your building’s air. Burner capacity ranges from approximately 45,000 BTUs per hour to 110,000 BTUs per hour.
Unfortunately, burner capacities for our climate are usually much larger than needed because manufacturers offer limited choices of the blower sizes needed to match the airflow requirements of your A/C unit.