New Furnace !
Ahhh… today was a good day!
When we originally had our inspector look at this house, he basically “condemned” the furnace! It was an Arkla, circa 1983. In fact, he told us it had been RECALLED in 1983, apparently because the heat exchangers didn’t last very long.
He did some sort of sonic test that told him how full of pin-holes the heat exchanger was.
Then he joked: “Well, this is proof that the house is VERY drafty, since nobody’s DIED in here yet !”
The heat exchanger was leaking a lot of carbon monoxide. So, he advised us that the furnace would need to be replaced.
Well, we managed to get $1000 out of the seller for this. Not enough to replace it, but at least I’d have a say in what kind of furnace we’d get and who would do the job !
Our friend Donnna referred a furnace company to us. Actually, we took in several referrals. However, after having our second referral come out to take a look / give us a quote, I decided he was the guy I believed would do a great job!
Ed Frechin of Frechin Heating and Cooling in Independence (816 796-0160) was our final choice!
I chose him because he was observant and informative. Like a doctor, he looked over and discussed what we had in the way of furnace, duct-work, A/C, etc… and then discussed options with me and answered my questions. He even honestly advised me to NOT replace the external A/C unit… and instead put that money into attic insulation (since there’s none up there in the rafters). I really liked it when he said “if it were MY house, I’d..” ! To me, that’s getting an expert opinion. And that’s just what a home-owner needs to hire. has over 30 years of experience in heating and cooling under his belt. So, I felt very good about working with him.
Ed and his son came out and installed a 90% 100,000 BTU Heil furnace today. Cost us $1975, when all was said and done. He was here by 8:30 AM and I think they left around 3:30 – 4:00 PM.
They replaced the furnace and the coil.
The only apparent complication we had today was that the external A/C unit seemed to have a bit of trouble starting up again. They installed a booster on it to help it out, but this may be a sign that that unit will need to be replaced in a year or two.