Does Your High-Efficiency Furnace Need a New Floor Drain?

Your high-efficiency furnace keeps your home comfortable while saving energy. It also creates a lot of moisture. How can you get rid of it and keep your system running smoothly? One way is with a concrete floor drain. Here’s why you need one in your home.

Condensing Furnaces

While most gas furnaces have one heat exchanger, a high-efficiency condensing furnace has two. This allows the unit to extract as much heat as possible from the air and heat your home more efficiently.

Once the heat is extracted, the gases in the exchanger become so cold that they condense into water and carbon dioxide. If the moisture isn’t eliminated, it builds up in both the heat exchanger and in the vent until the accummulated water prevents the furnace from heating the air properly.

It can also grow mold and bacteria, which damages your indoor air quality. That’s why your condensing furnace needs a drain: to get the moisture out of the system and keep everything running smoothly.

Installing a Concrete Floor Drain

If your furnace is in the basement on a concrete floor, then your drain will need to be installed directly into the concrete. This isn’t an easy task. It’s better, if possible, to have the concrete floor drain installed as the concrete is being poured. If your basement is just being built, ask the contracters to install a drain in the floor to accommodate a high-efficiency furnace.

However, if you already have a concrete floor in place, it’s still possible to bore a hole into it to create a drain. If you’re good with DIY plumbing projects, it’s even possible to do the job yourself. However, this isn’t recommended.

The job is difficult and complicated, and if it’s done incorrectly, it can cause the water to drain improperly, damaging the system. Call a professional instead to install the drain for you and keep your system running efficiently.

If you need to install a concrete floor drain for your high-efficiency furnace, contact us at Energy 1 Heating & Air Conditioning. We provide quality home-comfort solutions to homeowners in the Lorain, Elyria, and Oberlin areas.