Best Furnace Brands

What to Look for in a New Furnace

1. Quality Furnace Brands: As with most home heating units, there are often different tiers of furnace standards that coincide with the quality each brand holds. Most brands will offer different tiers of heating units that cater to a homeowner's budget that also correlate to your home's heating needs. If you are need to replace your entire HVAC system with both a new furnace as well as a new AC unit, check out our list of the best air conditioning units.

2. Lifetime Value: Installing a new furnace and selecting the best option for your home is important. The initial cost is often easier to estimate, but you will also need to consider the added costs of lifetime maintenance for a home furnace. A quality brand will need less repairs overtime.

3. High AFUE Ratings: Efficiency of furnace brands are measured by a fuel converted to heat ratio called Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency (AFUE.) A good furnace brand should offer an 80% to 99% AFUE rating. It might not seem like a worthwhile investment to spend an extra $200 or even $500 for a higher efficiency furnace in your home, but with efficiency improvements at such an affordable rate, it is often worth it to step up to a better brand with a more efficient product.

4. Good Warranties: Look closely at the length of the warranties each brand offers for different parts. Warranties covering 10 years of operation are common with quality products. Not only do top companies like Trane or Carrier offer 10-year warranties on most defected or failed furnace parts, but they also cover additional expenses like the labor costs incurred to fix the systems.

---

Average Furnace Installation Costs

The average furnace installation cost will vary depending on the factors discussed throughout this article. However, most brands will offer different prices and tiers on their replacement furnaces. If you want a more affordable gas furnace you may want to look into installing a new Goodman brand furnace in your home, which on average would cost around $1,850 to install. If you are looking for a higher quality gas furnace that may have more to offer, you would research a Carrier gas furnace which would costs around $3,075 for installation costs. Here is a list of some of the top brands and their associated installation costs:

Gas Furnace Costs by Brand

Gas Furnace Brands	Gas Furnace Prices	Furnace Installation Costs
Amana	$895	$2,285
American Standard	$1,378	$3,800
Bryant	$975	$2,520
Carrier	$1,260	$3,075
Coleman	$730	$2,210
Goodman	$685	$1,850
Heil	$820	$2,420
Lennox	$1,450	$3,885
Nordyne	$932	$2,400
Payne	$645	$1,900
Rheem	$1,180	$2,890
Ruud	$1,189	$3,182
Trane	$1,254	$3,186
York	$790	$2,100

If you are interested in costs for an electric furnace installation, we also discuss those specs on our electric furnace cost guide page.

What Size Furnace Do I Need?

When it comes to figuring out the best size furnace for your home, you can easily decide the best size heating unit by looking at your home's square footage as seen in the chart below as well as knowing your area's climate zone. A BTU when talking about furnaces is the measurement of heat output that your furnace is capable of producing for your home based on square footage of your home. For example, a 2,000 square foot would need a gas furnace with a 70,000 BTU heating output. See our BTU and size chart below along with the correlating furnace unit size you would need for your home here:

Gas Furnace & AC Size Needed

Home Size	Furnace BTU	Central AC Unit Size
1,200 sq. ft	50,000 BTU	1.5 to 2 tons
1,200 to 1,500 sq. ft	55,000 BTU	2 tons
1,500 to 1,800 sq. ft	60,000 BTU	2.5 tons
1,800 to 2,500 sq. ft	70,000 BTU	2.5 to 3 tons
2,500 to 3,500 sq. ft	90,000 to 100,000 BTU	3.5 to 4 tons

---

Quality Control on Furnaces

Even two furnaces made from the same materials might not function the same, and that's where quality control comes into play. Leading companies, such as Trane, emphasize using high-quality materials and proper assembly. In fact, Trane's SEET (Systems Extreme Environmental Test) Laboratory in Texas conducts rigorous product inspections. Each unit is subjected to warm and cold testing, salt spray, and a variety of other difficult tests designed to add five years of wear to a unit in just one week. With such comprehensive testing, equipment from Trane—or other similar manufacturers—is reliable.

---

HVAC Enhanced Engineering

Careful engineering practices and regular development help top brands offer the highest efficiency products and the coolest new features for your home heating needs. Amana, Trane, and other leading companies have their own engineering department that test current products and design components to improve heating products and enhance reliability, efficiency, performance, and everything else that makes a best brand.

---

Furnace Installers Near You

Many furnace brands, such as Trane or Mitsubishi, offer some sort of authentication and credential process for furnace installation technicians. When professionals go through the proper steps to gain these credentials, you know they can be relied upon to do a good job. It is a simple way to protect your home and ensure that you are getting the best contractors available. Compare local quotes below from contractors who work with the best furnace brands available:

Talk to a Contractor