Archives for February 2014

95% Furnaces

95% Furnaces
By Betty Stephens

High-efficiency furnaces provide exceptional value, and can be used with natural gas or converted to propane. In addition, the furnace also works with your outdoor system to circulate cool air in summer, helping you stay comfortable all year long.

95% AFUE furnaces save home owners cash in the long run, even without the tax credit. “Simply place, with a 95% AFUE furnace, for every dollar you commit on heating power, 95 cents of that dollar is utilized to warm your residence. 95% AFUE furnaces with a variable-speed blower are even a lot more effective. The variable-speed blowers used in the 95% AFUE Variable-Speed Furnace usually need up to 75 % less electricity than a common motor. Due to the fact a furnace’s blower also operates with the home’s cooling method to circulate air, customers encounter elevated efficiency year-round.
The condensing furnace is so efficient and extracts so much heat from the combustion process that its exhaust vent / flue is just warm to the touch, not “burn your fingers hot” like a conventional furnace. The primary difference between the conventional furnace and the 95% furnace is in the dual heat exchangers.
High-efficiency furnaces feature a second combustion chamber, which captures exhaust gases and moisture before it exits into the flue. This second chamber condenses the gaseous by-products to form a liquid, and then extracts any remaining heat. This heat is then transferred into a second heat exchanger, which supplements the primary heat exchanger and helps to heat the air. The small amount of remaining waste is exhausted from the home through a small flue or even a simple pipe in the wall.
Furnace Efficiency Ratings
The existing furnace in your home, or maybe one you are considering purchasing, can be organized into these efficiency categories.
• Low Efficiency Furnace: 55% to 72% AFUE
• Low Efficiency Furnace: 78% AFUE
• Standard / Mid Efficiency Gas Furnace: 80% to 83% AFUE
• High Efficiency Gas Furnace: 90% to 98% AFUE
The metric used to measure furnace efficiency is called the AFUE rating. AFUE is an acronym for Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency and it measures the amount of fuel converted to heat in the space in proportion to the amount of fuel which enters the furnace. The higher the AFUE the more efficient the furnace is.
Homes today are required to have an AFUE rating of at least 78% but furnaces of this low AFUE are typically found in manufactured homes. For a furnace to meet the DOE’s Energy Star program, it must be a high efficiency furnace with an AFUE of 90% or higher.

Target Hacking Attack Linked to HVAC Contractor’s Computer

Hacking Target
By Betty Stephens

The hackers who stole millions of customers’ credit and debit card numbers from Target may have used a Pittsburgh-area heating and refrigeration business as the way to get in through a back door. Experts believe the thieves gained access during the busy holiday season to about 40 million credit and debit card numbers and the personal information including names, email addresses, phone numbers and home addresses of as many as 70 million customers.
Investigators appear to be looking at that theory. It shows how vulnerable big corporations have become as they expand and connect their computer networks to other companies to increase convenience and productivity. Fazio Mechanical Services, a contractor that does business with Target, said in a statement Thursday that it was the victim of a “sophisticated cyber attack operation,” just as Target was. It said it is cooperating with the Secret Service and Target to figure out what happened.
President Ross Fazio confirmed that the U.S. Secret Service visited his company’s offices in connection with the Target investigation, Fazio Mechanical also has done refrigeration and HVAC projects for specific Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and BJ’s Wholesale Club locations in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.
It’s not immediately clear why Target would have given an HVAC company external network access, or why that access would not be cordoned off from Target’s payment system network. But according to a cyber security expert at a large retailer stated it is common for large retail operations to have a team that routinely monitors energy consumption and temperatures in stores to save on costs and to alert store managers if temperatures in the stores fluctuate outside of an acceptable range that could prevent customers from shopping at the store.
The new details illustrate what can go wrong with the far-flung computer networks that big companies increasingly rely on. “Companies really have to look at the risks associated with that,” said Ken Stasiak, CEO of Secure State, a Cleveland firm that investigates data breaches. Stasiak said industry regulations require companies to keep corporate operations such as contracts and billing separate from consumer financial information.
Since Target disclosed the breach, banks, credit unions and other card companies have canceled and reissued cards, closed accounts and refunded credit card holders for transactions made with the stolen data. A lawsuit has been filed seeking class-action status on behalf of financial institutions nationwide that have spent time and money helping customers deal with the effects of the data breach.

Propane (LP) Shortage

LP Liquid Propane Shortage
By Betty Stephens

The price of the fuel that’s used to heat many north Iowa and southern homes has reached nearly $5 per gallon, and it’s leaving some people wondering how they’ll pay for their LP and many of them are now turning to local lawmakers. Some 14 million households use the liquefied gas to heat homes, especially in upper Midwestern states such as Michigan and Ohio, where the shortages have had the most impact.

The shortage has been blamed on a combination of a wet harvest and an extremely cold January but many people question that, saying he believes there’s more to the story. The U.S. has exported so much LP to Europe that Europe is actually sending us ships back to the East coast full of LP because the European reserves on LP are full.
In addition to the weather, inventories have also been stretched by short-term logistical problems and a long-term shift toward exporting more liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), production of which has surged due to the shale revolution.
Demand has been boosted by the combination of record freezing weather at the start of this year and a late, wet, record corn harvest last October and November, when large quantities of propane were used to dry out crops. Propane stocks have been drained and prices in the region are the highest since at least 1990. The industry is doing is literally working round the clock to move propane from where it is, in the large storage facility in Texas, using trains and trucks, pipelines and barges to where it is needed.
Prices
Prices have spiked for the fuel that nearly 6 million U.S. households rely on for home heating. Nationwide, propane prices averaged $2.86 per gallon last week, up 17% from the same period a year earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Prices are even higher in some regions. Residential customers in New York State, for example, paid an average of $3.28 a gallon for propane last week, up from under $3 a gallon in December and 20% higher than at this time last year.

Prices are likely to go even higher as another blast of extreme cold weather is expected. Temperatures will be 10 to 25 degrees below average across much of the country. Temperatures below freezing could extend far south.