Purchasing a new furnace can be a tedious thing if you don't know much about them. Knowing some of the basics about furnaces, your home, and efficiency can make all the difference in the world actually. Let's start with the home. You need to know of course the size of your home so you know how much space will need to be heated. The other side of this coin is insulation. You should take a look through your home to see what type of insulation you have. The better your insulation the more likely the heat that is generated will stay inside (allowing you to only turn the furnace on for short periods of time to maintain the heated area, thus lowering your electric and gas bills depending on what type of furnace you get). High efficiency gas furnace units are always the better way to go because gas is much cheaper to use than electricity.
Once you've figured these two things out, your home's square footage (of the areas needing to be heated) and your insulation efficiency, then the next step is to do some research on high efficiency gas furnaces. Before we get into that I want to note that you can save money by replacing or appending your current insulation if it proves to be inefficient. It does little good to purchase a more powerful furnace if your insulation is poor, but it will cost less and save you money in the long and short run on bills if you simply tackle that issue first. You will be surprised how much money you will save on purchasing a smaller efficient furnace and putting the rest of the money into your insulation vs. just getting a more powerful unit (because the hot air will leave the home in scenario two, which is like throwing money out the window- or should I say, through the roof/walls?).
Once you've nailed these things, doing the research on your high efficiency gas furnace is a synch. Simply go online and do a search for furnaces. You will find sites that will show you what the best unit to buy for certain square footage are as well as sites describing in some detail what each unit does and why it's good for certain types of homes. You will also find many reviews by people who use them and are happy (or not so happy) with their unit. Be careful not to simply take every review to heart as some are not written by people who have the unit but rather sales sites that simply want you to buy THEIR furnace. Armed with all this information, which should take you about an hour to research, and print out some of it, you can now go searching for the furnace you decided on. You will know the lingo so when you call the various companies they won't think you're a newbie and try to sell you things you don't need.
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