With a new decade comes new
regulations. And although most of these regulations will not affect you, there
is one in particular that could change the way you heat your home. San Joaquin
Valley Air Pollution Control District’s regulation known as Rule 4905 requires
a reduction of the amount of NOx produced by natural gas furnaces; after March
31st of this year, everyone in the San Joaquin Air Quality District
will be required to install an Ultra Low-NOx (ULN) furnace when they replace
their system, instead of standard low-NOx furnaces.
As a quick primer on what these
terms mean: nitrous oxide (NO) and nitrous dioxide (NO2) are
pollutants that are the byproduct of combustion from nautral gas furnaces and
are commonly referred to as NOx. This NOx produced from the furnace combines
with other volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) to produce ground-level ozone (a
carcinogen), and to combat pollution, the Air Quality District has lowered
furnaces’ allowed NOx emissions from ≤40 ng/J (nanograms per joule) to ≤14
ng/J. Rule 4905 declared this standard (one
that no manufacturer could meet at the time) in 2015, but allowed for an interim
product development period in which manufacturers could sell continue to sell standard
low-NOx furnaces by paying a mitigation fee. That interim grace period ends this year on March
31st; on April 1st, we will only be able to set an ULN
furnace in the Central Valley. To date,
almost all manufacturers have introduced a line of furnaces that comply with
the new requirement.
Unfortunately, we have found
several problems with these new compliant furnaces. Not only are they nearly twice as expensive,
but they were also rushed into production with little actual testing. Although every manufacturer claims their ULN
furnaces are reliable and robust, the word on the street is that they all have
problems due to being reliant on stable
and consistent gas pressure to and within the home. Standard low-NOx furnaces,
on the other hand, are very forgiving in response to the normal fluctuations
most homes have with their gas pressure.
Think of how the water pressure drop from flushing a toilet can cause a
shower’s hot water to become suddenly scalding- this same type of pressure drop
in the gas line when, say, the water heater comes on, detrimentally affects ULN
furnaces and causes a multitude of problems, including premature failure.
Because of these issues, we have
decided it is not in our customers’ best interest to install ULN furnaces and as
such, we will instead be installing all-electric heat pump systems from April
forward. Even though heat pumps currently cost more to install than systems
with standard low-NOx furnaces, they will nonetheless still be less expensive
than the ULN furnaces, and come with the peace of mind that only tried-and-true
equipment can.
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