Coolair

31-Jan-09
Michelin G

I thought I was getting just a good deal on a heating air conditioning system. Well I was wrong in a good way. We had a real bad ice storm that left us without electric power for two full days. My computer, TV, some lights, cable box, telephone box, router were on inverter 24/ 7 and we had basic service during the whole ordeal. But no heat.!
Being that the new furnace had a computer of sorts, a variable speed blower and other solid state stuff, I decided it was time to hook it up to a separate inverter. One that powered my camper microwave. I turned off house circuit breaker and plugged in an extension cord to inverter and turned on inverter. The thermostat remembered settings and started to heat the house with all of its 60,000 BTU output. In two hours house got up to 68 from 49.8 degrees. It got up to 62 in the first hour, slow the rest of the way.
A regular furnace has an induction motor which is noisy with modified sine waves (square waves in reality). But with a DC buss as per manual instructions , I knew an inverter would be ok. I used Variable frequency drives in the Air Force and they are powered by a DC buss. So therefore so should a house furnace. Right? Well it worked just fine now I will have a back up for next time. It is nice that the cool air company gives all manuals and I read them to try and see what I was getting. A real deal in that case. My old furnace did not run on inverter good . Rather it it was noisy with square waves and even gas solenoid was noisy too adding to vibration. The first day was without heat till I tried it and we kept warm by using computer inverter for bed warmer blanket. But you can only stay in bed so long.
As soon as power came on, I unplugged inverter, turned on AC circuit breaker back on,and did went back to normal activities. So getting a HYBRID furnace paid off big time for at least I had safe heat. Natural gas and my inverter.
Rusty and Michelin