PST FTN

While you are carefully analyzing how much your energy costs are likely to be, don’t forget to ask the most basic question of all about any temperature-control system — namely, does it work? If it’s 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the living room when you look at the house in January, it’s easy to tell that something is wrong. But in the middle of July, in most places in the United States, a heating problem would not be readily apparent.
The home inspector should test the heating system to be sure it fires up, and should let it run for several hours (even longer on a warm day) to be sure it’s operating properly. This is a routine part of the inspection and will probably be conducted as a matter of course by a professional inspector, but it can’t hurt you to know that it has to be done. If you don’t find a reference to the heating-system test in the inspector’s report, ask for an explanation.
Unfortunately, you can’t run the same kind of out-of-season test on an air-conditioning system without risking serious damage. If the system can’t be tested because you’re buying the house in the middle of winter, I’d recommend putting some portion of the purchase money — at least $2,500 — into an escrow account to cover repairs should you discover problems later.
Bear in mind that with heating and cooling systems, bigger is not necessarily better. A system that’s too large for the living space it’s serving will be inefficient and costly. Find out as much as you can about the age of the system and its maintenance history. An older system that has been well maintained is less of a worry than a newer one that has not been touched since it was installed. But if maintenance is equal, newer systems are generally more efficient, more trouble-free, and more likely still to be covered by warranties.
Don’t jump to conclusions about what needs to be replaced and what can be fixed up or lived with. A furnace that doesn’t work clearly will have to go, but replacing a less efficient unit with a more efficient one may or may not be something to put at the top of your list of priorities. You’ll have to consider the savings you would realize in energy costs, the one-time cost of the change, and how long it would take you to recover your
investment.
For example, if you calculate that spending $10,000 on a new heating plant wifi save you $500 a year, as it well might, consider that it will take twenty years to recover the cost of your initial investment. Especially if you pian to live in the house for only a few years, that may be an unattractive concept. Before considering a massive overhaul of any existing system, make sure first that you have exhausted all the less dramatic remedies and have priced out the options carefully. Adding insulation and good conservation measures require a relatively small investment and can produce huge savings immediately.