GTI Energy has just completed the study “Improving the Performance of Wall Furnaces in California. With funding from the California Energy Commission and Southern California Gas, GTI Energy performed laboratory testing and field monitoring of existing standard wall furnaces and more efficient retrofit furnaces. This project gathered information about baseline and retrofit wall furnace operation and indoor air quality from wall furnaces in the field, and tested wall furnace performance and exhaust gas emissions in the laboratory.
Ten existing wall furnaces were monitored in apartments and small homes in Los Angeles, Oakland, Hayward, and Sacramento. After a collecting operating data and measuring indoor air quality over a heating season, these baseline wall furnaces were removed and sent to the laboratory to test their performance and emissions.
Four efficient retrofit wall furnace models were also tested in the laboratory, then installed as replacements for the baseline wall furnaces and field tested over another heating season. The retrofit furnaces had improvements like intermittent pilots, low NOx emissions controls, improved burners, and more efficient heat exchangers, and one of the retrofit models was a direct vent condensing furnace.
Results showed that more efficient wall furnaces can substantially reduce heating energy use, decrease emissions, and improve indoor air quality.
This presentation will go over the research work and findings, then extrapolate those results to the estimated 1.4 million wall furnaces in California. It also gives practical information about how to obtain, install, and maintain efficient wall furnaces.