I'll sing the praises of new stuff
when it can work as well as the old stuff and last longer than the warranty.
I've been posting my fuel bills from my new digs with the Goodman (union made) 96% AFUE furnace. I never paid more than $60/month for gas which is far less than what I spent at the condo where I lived for 15 years. (BTW the Heil furnace and AC were originally installed when the unit was built in the late 80's)
However, this is not true apples to apples because I also had a gas water heater and about 350 more SQ ft to heat/cool at the condo. Plus older, less energy eff construction.
What is noteworthy is this and this is a cold, hard, in your face fact that cannot be denied. Speaking of the 15 years I lived there nothing, I mean nothing was replaced on either unit. Just a fall visit to clean the thermocouple and that was it. And yes, I ran the furnace like anyone else would. Same for the A/C no leaks, defroster boards to crap the bed, no communication Wi-fi failure, no error code. It withstood cold, snow, and the occasional electrical storm with nary a whimper.
Yes my Goodman runs, does the job, is efficient blah blah blah but I know for a fact, that it will NOT be as durable as the old Heil and inducer motors are not cheap nor are the pressure sensors, the flame sensors, the flame rollout sensor or the made in China control board. I guarantee you when I go to fix any one of those, it will more than eat up what I saved in natural gas costs. Go price out an ECM motor for any new furnace. Call me when you wake up after passing out once you see the cost.
And therein lies the rub. All this new crap is nice, it blinks, really jibes with the attention deficit millennial generation, is hi tech, can be controlled with your smart phone, et cetera but what about the cost to repair it? I see thermostats, wi fi going for over $300! Why in god's name would some dolt want to shell out that much for a t-stat is beyond me. That could be equivalent to 3 months gas bill! Is it really necessary? As noted earlier, we got by for years with machines that washed laundry and did it with little drama unless you had a walker machine on spin cycle. They were simple, durable machines. They worked, perhaps some better than others, but they all did the same thing.
Same thing with the Kalifornia toilets. Apparently 1.6 gallon was too greedy, now we got down to 1.28. Are we rabbits or are we human? Come visit me sometime and if you have to use the john, I will offer you the following instructions:
1. Do #1. flush once, you're ok
2. Do #2. Do your duty. Then flush
3. After #2, then wipe, flush again OOOOPS 1.28x2= 2.56 plus a "courtesy flush" using another 1.28 gallons to remove the skid marks (and stench) from the bowl.
According to my math that makes 3.84 gallons (and a session with Korky the plunger)
That is more than 3.5 gallons.
I suppose this makes sense to somebody, more than likely a brainless bureaucrat in DC that should probably submit to a random drug test. No sane person would come up with such asinine regulations based on even more juvenile "scientific" conjecture.
Washman out.