If you smell gas, leave the house and call 911 and your gas utility before anything else.
Ogden has the oldest housing stock of any city on this list, and that is the single most useful thing to know about heating here. A good deal of the city predates the Second World War, with the bulk of the rest built between the 1940s and the 1970s. Houses that old have been through multiple heating systems, and in many cases the current furnace is sitting in the footprint of something fundamentally different — a gravity system whose ducts were sized for air that moved on its own. Most Ogden heating problems trace back to that history rather than to the furnace itself.
Before forced air, furnaces heated by convection and the ducts were huge, short and nearly vertical, because warm air had to rise on its own. When those systems were converted to forced air, the new furnace was commonly connected into the old distribution, and a lot of Ogden basements still show the evidence: oversized trunks, very few branches, registers in floors near interior walls, and almost no dedicated return.
A modern blower in that system behaves oddly. Air short-circuits back to the return instead of reaching the far rooms, velocity in the oversized trunks is too low to carry heat where it needs to go, and rooms added later often have the thinnest connection to the system. The complaint is uneven heat, and no amount of equipment replacement changes it.
What helps is distribution work: adding return air, adding or resizing branches to the rooms that are starved, and in some cases abandoning parts of the old trunk in favor of properly sized runs. It is less glamorous than a new furnace and it is usually the thing that actually fixes the house.
In an older Ogden home the masonry chimney is doing real work, often for the furnace and the water heater together. Masonry chimneys in houses of this age are frequently unlined or have deteriorating liners, and the furnace has been venting into them for decades without anyone looking.
Two things follow. First, a chimney in poor condition is a safety issue on its own terms, independent of what the furnace is doing, and it is worth having looked at. Second, replacing the furnace with a high-efficiency unit removes the furnace from the chimney entirely, and the water heater left behind on an oversized unlined flue is a classic drafting failure waiting to happen.
The right version of this conversation includes the chimney and the water heater in the same quote as the furnace. The wrong version is a price for a furnace alone, followed by a phone call about the water heater two weeks later. Ask which one you are being given.
Older houses leaked, and the appliances in the basement relied on that. Over the years Ogden homes have had new windows, new doors, added insulation and air sealing, all of which are good for comfort and bills and all of which reduce the air available for combustion. A furnace and a water heater that drafted fine for forty years can stop drafting after an energy retrofit.
The warning signs are specific and worth knowing: soot or scorching around a draft hood, a water heater flue that feels like it is spilling warm air into the room, condensation on windows near the mechanical room, and a carbon monoxide alarm that goes off intermittently. Any of those is a reason to stop and get it looked at rather than wait and see.
The remedy is providing combustion air deliberately, through a duct or a vent sized for the appliances, or moving to sealed-combustion equipment that takes its air directly from outside. Either way this is licensed work. A carbon monoxide alarm on every level of the house is worth having regardless of what the furnace is doing.
In a house of that age the more likely answer is the duct system, especially if it started life as a gravity system. Those ducts were short, oversized and nearly vertical because air moved by convection, and a modern blower cannot push heat to the far rooms through them. Adding return air and properly sized branch runs to the starved rooms is usually what fixes it, not more capacity.
Very possibly, and it should be addressed in the quote rather than afterward. Chimneys in older Ogden homes are often unlined or have failing liners. If the new furnace is high-efficiency it leaves the chimney entirely, which leaves your water heater on a flue sized for two appliances and running cooler than it was designed for — a common cause of poor draft. A liner or a venting change is the usual fix.
Quite possibly, and it is worth treating as urgent. Older houses supplied combustion air through their own leakiness, and tightening a house up can leave the appliances in the basement without enough air to draft properly. Soot around a draft hood, warm air spilling out of a flue, or an intermittent carbon monoxide alarm all point the same way. Get it looked at by a licensed contractor rather than waiting.
Describe what the furnace is doing and we'll match you with a licensed contractor who can act on it.
Get a Furnace Contractor OutA short description is enough — we'll follow up to confirm the details and get someone scheduled.
