Furnace Installation in San Antonio, TX

Start with what the house has. If there is a gas line, a gas furnace gives you strong, inexpensive heat during a hard freeze, and pairing it with a heat pump as a dual-fuel system gives you cheap heat on the mild mornings too. If the house is all-electric, a heat pump is almost always the better buy over an electric furnace, because it moves heat instead of making it and only leans on its resistance strips when the outdoor temperature falls into the 20s. An electric furnace uses those strips for every minute of heating. Whichever direction you lean, the blower matters more than the burner here, since it runs the cooling side for seven months. We price the realistic options for your house in writing and let you choose.

Either, and in San Antonio most go in the attic because that is where the ductwork already is. An attic furnace needs a solid platform, a walkway and enough working space around it for service, plus a secondary drain pan under the coil so a clogged condensate line drips into a pan instead of through a ceiling. A closet furnace needs a source of combustion air and correct clearances, which older ranch houses on the northeast side sometimes lack after a remodel closed off a louvered door. Both locations have their venting rules. We look at the existing setup on the estimate visit and tell you whether the new furnace can go where the old one was or whether something has to change first.

Honestly, the fuel savings alone rarely justify it here. A furnace that runs a few hundred hours a year does not burn enough gas for a higher efficiency rating to pay back quickly, the way it would in Minnesota. What does pay back is the blower. Higher-end furnaces come with variable-speed blowers, and that fan runs every day of the cooling season, where it uses less electricity, moves air more evenly and helps the air conditioner pull humidity out of the house. If the house has comfort problems in summer, a better furnace can be the fix. If the old one heated fine and the AC is fine, a solid mid-range furnace sized correctly is the sensible choice, and we will tell you so.

Not always. The air conditioner’s indoor coil sits on top of the furnace, so it comes out during a furnace replacement, and whether it goes back depends on its age and whether it matches the condenser outside. If the outdoor unit is only a few years old and uses current refrigerant, we reinstall or replace the coil to match it and leave the condenser alone. If the outdoor unit is as old as the furnace, replacing everything at once avoids paying for attic labor twice within a few years and gets you a matched system that performs as rated. Both sets of numbers go on the written quote, and financing through Service Finance Company, LLC is available for either, subject to credit approval. Our San Antonio AC installation page covers the cooling side.