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roughyear

Heating questions.. replacing furnace with??

roughyear
9 years ago

My parents have an old Duplex, built in the 1940s (Washington DC area). The house is 3 floors, approximately 1200 SqFt total, with a flat roof, no attic. .. old military type housing.

The house has a gas furnace (located in the basement) with forced air (big air blower in the kitchen) that blows/circulates the heat to the main floor and upper floor (I don't think it blows any air into the basement).

For some reason there is very little air that is being blown out of the ducts, barely enough to blow a piece of paper off the duct. We had HVAC guys come out and they don't know what to do.. replaced the motor and checked for blockage, but still very little air is being pushed out of the duct system. As the system is very old (the furnace was replaced in the 1990s, from the previous one in the 1960s). There is a tiny "water facet/air release" above the blower in the kitchen.

The house does have an extension onto it in the back, which has baseboard radiators on the floor, I guess they're water based (sometimes you can hear water rushing through them), but I can not remember them ever working when I was a kid, so the back room/extension has always been heated with a space heater. The entire house has window AC units.

My question.. does anyone know what might be the problem?? Most of the HVAC guys are "young" and don't know much about these all systems. We asked about replacement with a potential Heat Pump, but they would not even give us an estimate for that, because of apparent lots of work to do it, though there are multiple duplex homes in the area with the darn Heat Pumps.

The problem propped up in Feb/March of this year.. and with the cold weather approaching, I don't want them freezing nor burning down the house with all these space heaters.

Reason I was thinking of a Heat Pump, was to also get central AC into this home, rather than 4 window AC units.

Options...and price estimates if possible.

Many Thanks

This post was edited by roughyear on Mon, Oct 13, 14 at 9:58

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