Wall furnaces: How well do they work? Noisy? (Albuquerque: house, living)

[Arcos]

Hi,
I am considering moving to a 2 bedroom duplex in Albuquerque and it has wall furnaces. I have only had experience with floor furnaces and forced air heat, but I hear that wall furnaces don't heat very well and may be noisy. Does anyone have experience with these?

I believe that there are three furnace units, one in each bedroom and one in the living/kitchen/dining area.

The house also only has single paned windows.

I am also wondering whether it will help that there is a shared wall, and that heat loss will be reduced due to that.

Any advice would be useful. I did a quick general search prior to posting and didn't see any threads that were helpful but if you know of one, that would be good too!

Thanks!

[mortimer]

Originally Posted by Arcos

I hear that wall furnaces don't heat very well and may be noisy.

I have had quite a few and in my experience, they are not any more noisy than floor furnaces.

Also, when they come on, it is always so welcome that you eventually associate the noise with pleasure.

Originally Posted by Arcos

The house also only has single paned windows.

You should always run a fan to circulate air so that it doesn't pool near the ceiling.
Just a small fan is enough. You don't need to feel the air moving to save big bucks.
The higher the ceiling, the worse the problem.

The single-pane window IS inefficient, so if you are looking to conserve,
there are products available that shrink-wrap the whole window with a hair dryer.

Originally Posted by Arcos

I am also wondering whether it will help that there is a
shared wall, and that heat loss will be reduced due to that.

There will be heat loss from whatever unit keeps their thermostat higher.

That is, if you keep yours at 70 degrees and your neighbor keeps theirs at
67 degrees, you will lose heat through that wall. Note that heat loss is a
function of the difference in temperature, so you will lose less heat through
that wall than the outside wall where it might be 20 or 30 degrees.

I used to like the floor heaters because when I got out of the shower, I
could turn it on manually and stand on top of it to get warm and dry off.
You can still do that with the wall heaters to an extent.

[jiminnm]

Wall furnaces can be electric or gas. If electric, they may be expensive to operate.

[Poncho_NM]

Wall furnaces usually can be efficient because they heat just one room. They can be powered by electricity, propane gas or natural gas. Propane can be expensive. Some are quiet, just depends on the model. We had a small wall furnace/heater in one of the bathrooms of our house in PA. It was electric and worked quite well.

I find forced air can be expensive if your ducts are leaking etc, and you are pretty much heating an entire large area...


As to see the heating (gas)/electric bills for the past year. Or ask the utility company. Otherwise you are just guess about what it costs to operate.


Rich

[mortimer]

Originally Posted by jiminnm

Wall furnaces can be electric or gas. If electric, they may be expensive to operate.

90% of the expense is controlled by the intelligence of the operator.

[Arcos]

For the record, I checked out the place and it wasn't what I wanted, but the wall heaters were fairly quiet and seemed generally effective.

[Cornflakes]

If it has a fan, keep the fan clean and the fan motor oiled. That will save you some potential headaches later on down the line.

[carlhabenicht]

new wall furnace bangs when heationg up and cooling down

[joqua]

Originally Posted by carlhabenicht

new wall furnace bangs when heationg up and cooling down

If its a fanless unit, and it's just "popping" rather than "banging," then that's just the nature of the beast as it expands and contracts during the heat on/heat off cycles. In fact, my entire house (wood frame) creaks and pops during weather changing seasons as it cools off at night when I'm not using as much heat.

I really like my old-fashioned panel gas heaters (3 of them heat my house) because they don't use any electricity and therefore don't lose heat with electrical outages. Gas outages are almost unheard of. All three are thermo-electrically temperature controlled.