What is the best brand of furnace?

We hear this question all the time. What is the best brand of furnace? We would love to give you a clear answer, but it is not that simple... In this blog post I'll try to give a brief overview of the world of furnace branding, and hopefully help you become a more educated and confident buyer.

Furnace branding is a complicated world of parent companies and affiliates. While there appears to be endless choices for residential furnace brands, there are really only a handful. Some companies try to create the illusion of choice and snag up market share with several different brand names under one parent company. Other times furnace companies are acquired so a company will organically grow its line of brand names. For example: Lennox furnaces are well known. Lennox also owns Allied Air Enterprises which produces the brands Air Ease, Ducane, Concord, and Armstrong Air, and Aire Flo. Within all of these brands there are higher end models and low end models, such as single stage constant torque on the lower end, and modulating variable speed models on the higher end. A second example is Daikin, another reputable brand, which acquired Goodman in 2012. Daikin now sells furnaces under the names Goodman, Amana, and Daikin. Selling equipment under at least two different brand names is the case for almost all manufacturers.

The quality difference between sister brands is often negligible. The differences are often not in their durability or longevity, but usually they are geared towards luxury features like quieter sound, more heat stages, even heating, and proprietary communicating operation. Some of these brands do have a serious distinction in quality, but other brands can be exact replicas of one another! For example the previously mentioned Armstrong Air and Air Ease brands are almost the exact same other than their colour and name, even sharing identical part numbers for most components.

On the flip side you have brands that have many different levels of quality under one brand name. Again with Lennox, you have the Merit series which is a basic bare-bones product line, but then you have the Dave Lennox Signature Series which are some of the most expensive and advanced furnaces out there.

To make things more complicated you have certain brands that sell equipment manufactured by a completely different company, but they slap their own sticker on. Napoleon brands itself as a premium Canadian-Made manufacturer, and they do make some good stuff right here in Canada, but their NS18 heat pump is just a rebranded Gree Flexx unit, which also happens to sell under the brand names Tosot, and Kinghome, and they are made in China. Confused yet?

Some folks have compared different HVAC brands to different vehicle makes (ie. Ford vs. Chevy) and I would agree with that comparison on several different levels:

Firstly, different generations of vehicles within one brand can vary drastically in quality. Think of the 7.3 vs 6.0 Powerstroke. One is a legend in the industry, and one is, well, not. The same could be said for furnaces. For example, Carrier had a run of furnaces in the 90's and 2000's that had horribly designed heat exchangers which eventually would clog up and potentially become dangerous. There was even a class action lawsuit against them, and they ended up having to extend the warranty of those furnaces. Though Carrier has since changed their design and is one of the premium brands in the industry, they did make some bad furnaces for a time. The same could probably be said for all brands.

Secondly, it comes down to your experiences and preferences. Your buddy who bought a Goodman furnace that broke down 3 times in the first year he had it will undoubtedly hate Goodman, and never buy one again. But another friend might have bought a Goodman furnace that ran for 20 years with zero issues. Both friends are going to have different opinions. The same would be said for a friend who owned a GMC truck that gave him nothing but headaches vs. the friend who drove one for 500000kms without incident. That same bias affects the HVAC technicians. Techs will often be very opinionated on furnace brands based on their personal experience with them. Techs who work on and sell Goodman products probably like Goodman because they understand how to fix them easily. Then they run into a Trane furnace they've never seen before and have a bad experience because they did not know the ins and outs of Trane. Voila, they now hate Trane.

Thirdly, the way some HVAC companies operate could be compared to vehicle companies. You often hear that it’s cheap to fix a Ford because parts are readily available and mass produced. On the other hand maybe it's more expensive to fix your Toyota but let's be honest it's probably less likely to break down in the first place. I would compare this to Goodman vs Trane furnaces. Goodman furnaces (in my ignorant opinion, as per the paragraph above), seem to be built with a low budget in mind, but parts are cheap and readily available. Trane, on the other hand, seems (again, in my opinion) to be well made and very durable, but replacement parts can often be more expensive if you ever need them.

Lastly in my vehicle/furnace comparison, ownership and installation matter the most. Your friend with a brand new Toyota Tundra who never changes the oil will almost certainly be in a new truck before your friend who meticulously maintains his Dodge Ram. Without proper maintenance you'll run into issues no matter what you are driving or heating your home with. A well-installed, well-maintained budget furnace will outlast a poorly installed, unmaintained premium-grade furnace every single time.

So let me break it down as simply as possible. It all boils down to hiring a company you trust who is going to honour their warranty and do a good job installing the equipment. I've heard it said that "The name on the truck is far more important than the name on the box." We at Chickadee Furnace Co agree with this statement 100%. The most important day in your furnace's life is the day it was installed, so make sure you can trust the company installing it to do the job right, and to offer support if anything were to ever go wrong.

In the end, the company you hire is going to have a lot more to do with your furnace buying experience than the brand of furnace you end up getting. Instead of focusing on which brand of furnace you want, spend more time vetting the company you want to install it. Make sure the salesman is actually educating you on your options, ask them about who their installers are and the fine print of their warranty process. Choose a company that has earned your trust with expertise and good customer service.

With all this being said Chickadee Furnace Co's main brand offering is Trane, which also offers the RunTru brand. We made this decision based on our experience with several different brands. With Trane, you pay more upfront, but you get a high quality product with a great track record of quality. Our decision also stems from the amount of support we receive from our local wholesaler. After experimenting with a few different suppliers we got the best service and support from our Trane dealer which helps us offer more reliable service to our customers.

Thanks for reading, and happy furnace hunting!

Nolan