The Ultimate Guide to HVAC Furnace Installation

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HVAC Furnace Installation

Does your home need a new air conditioning system? Whether you’re upgrading your HVAC heating system after a remodel or building a new home, you’ll always need a new HVAC furnace that will suit the needs of your home. In either scenario, it’s crucial to know the essential steps that will ensure a proper and professional HVAC system installation. To get some proper HVAC furnace installation, you’ll need a professional contractor who’ll adhere to the installation process requirements.

This blog post presents to you the essential steps and guidelines to follow when installing an HVAC furnace on your property. HVAC heating systems get powered by many systems. But as an example, this post uses the forced-air gas furnace that is popular among homeowners.

Size the System and Calculate the Load for Your Air Conditioner

As described on www.furnaceusa.com site, before installing your HVAC furnace, you’ll need to meet with your contracted professionals to assess and discuss your heating needs. Professionals from the contracted installing company should perform a load calculation after measuring your building’s square footage and heating needs. The pros will also check for any air leaks and the integrity of your insulation. The assessment helps them to determine the level of heating that you’ll need for your desired level of comfort. The contracted professional installers can use customized software or manuals such as the manual J calculations to calculate the capacity of the required HVAC heating unit.

Find an Ideal Location for Your Air Conditioning Unit

Once the proper size of your system gets determined, you should choose an ideal location for the unit. The unconditioned space is often the ideal location for the unit. Crawl-in spaces, garages, utility rooms, basements, and attics are also suitable locations for the unit. But such places should meet the local building codes, and they should get protected from the vagaries of weather. While choosing such a location, you should consider the location of the refrigerant lines, air supply tubing, condensate drain lines, and other fixtures. Always refer to your local building codes when making such considerations.

Clean the Area to Hold the Air Conditioning Unit

Before installing your air conditioner, you should clean the installation area by clearing all the debris and dust. If you’re to install the system in a basement, then you should construct a simple above-ground platform for the unit. You can do so by placing blocks that will lift the installation platform by at least 4 inches above the ground. Such platforms protect the unit from flush flooding.

Choose where the Drain and Duct Lines Will Run

You should cut a hole in the unit for the return air duct line, which should get located at the bottom or the side of your unit. Many of the HVAC heating units come with pre-marked opening areas of appropriate sizes. Thereafter, you should decide the direction in which the condensate drain will flow. After that, you should position your furnace in an appropriate position that is almost level. But with a slight slope and tilt towards the condensate drain exit.

Link Your Unit to the Ducting System

After adequate and correct positioning of the HVAC furnace unit, you should connect the unit to the ducting system in your home. All connections should get sealed with duct sealant or an ideal metal foil tape. You should avoid using duct tape in such circumstances because it won’t last.

Make System Connections to the Vent Pipes

After connecting to the duct system, you should connect your heating HVAC unit to the exhaust and intake pipes. The connections should get made with slight angles that slope away from the HVAC unit. The slope will ensure that all the condensate can drain with ease from the system. Link the Gas Supply Next, connect the gas supply and make sure that there are enough ventilation and shutoff. Thereafter, you should check for any leaks that may lead to energy waste and heating inefficiency.

Electrical Supply Connection

You should verify the wiring of the system before starting your unit. You should be more mindful of the polarity of the connections when undertaking this step. You should use the instructional manual to check whether you’ve done the connections in a proper way.

Connect the Condensate Drain

You should use a proper-sized hose to connect the condensate drain from the unit to a drain hole on the floor. You should run the condensate drain line from the system’s drain trap to an ideal condensate drain. You should follow the set local building and systems installation codes. You should pitch your drain line by approximately 1/4 an inch for every foot that it runs. Always avoid connecting your condensate line to any closed drainage systems. If your system has an overhead position, you should always use a secondary drain pan for such systems that are above the ground.

Check Your Connections and Entire Work

You’ll need to perform a test-run after installation to determine whether your HVAC heating system is working well. You should turn on and run the unit through a complete heating cycle to make sure that the output temperatures are well within the set limits designed by the manufacturer. You should run the system for at least one hour to get the best results. Also, consider checking for any leakages.

Final Thoughts

HVAC furnace system installation is a complex process with many technical steps that need the skills of a professional installer. The outlined steps in this post give homeowners a rough idea of how it gets done and the challenges that installers may face. Even with careful adherence to such a guideline, it’s still not advisable to undertake an HVAC system installation as a DIY project. It might be tempting to do such an installation on your own because it’s affordable.

But there is a possibility of encountering challenges and making expensive mistakes that may lead to great losses. Such systems have many complicated components that include plumbing, ducting, and electrical connections. All these need specialized tools and skills from qualified installers. As such, always contract professional installers to install your air conditioner, and you’ll be on the safe side.

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