A Variable-Speed Furnace Blower Boosts Comfort, Energy Savings

If saving money on heating your home is one of your financial goals, consider a variable-speed furnace blower that reduces electrical consumption substantially. These blower motors use different fan settings to heat and cool your home throughout the year, providing energy and cost savings and other home-comfort benefits.

• A  variable-speed furnace blower consumes less electricity because it converts AC power to DC, a more efficient use of electricity. Engineering studies have found that these blowers can reduce heating and air conditioning costs by as much as 40 percent. A single-speed motor can use 625 watts an hour, while a variable-speed motor uses 100 watts.
• These motors start and stop slowly, so you don’t feel a cold blast of air in the winter coming from the ducts. The longer running period also exhausts all the conditioned air in the ducts, making the most of your energy dollars. The air stays comfortable longer when the blower runs longer. The variable-speed furnace blower is also able to remove more humidity from the air because it runs longer and more slowly, increasing comfort in the summer when humidity can be uncomfortable.

• The slower running speeds help clean the pollen, dust and dander from your indoor air better than fans that blow on high speed. People who suffer from allergies can set the furnace blower to run constantly, which removes many more particulates from the air, improving symptoms.

• Motors that run fast create more noise, and the slow running speed of variable-speed motors makes them the quietest of any for forced air heating systems.

A heating and cooling system that uses a variable-speed furnace blower typically receives a higher energy rating than one that has a single-speed motor. The higher the rating, the less electricity the system uses.

If you’d like more information about installing an energy-efficient heating system, contact us to learn more. We’ve been serving the Portland region, including the Bend and Salem areas, since 1976.