10/09/2026
THE INDEPENDENCE ENERGY WATCH
What If You Didn’t Feel Your Furnace or Air Conditioner Come On?
Do you have rooms in your house that are always hotter or colder than the rest?
Or does this sound familiar?
The house gets uncomfortable.
The thermostat finally calls.
Then suddenly the furnace or air conditioner comes on, the blower starts moving a lot of air, and you get a blast of hot or cold air.
A few minutes later everything shuts off.
Then the house slowly becomes uncomfortable again.
Cold. Hot. Cold. Hot.
For decades, that’s how many heating and cooling systems have operated.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Over the last several weeks we’ve talked about sealing attic air leaks and increasing insulation toward R-60.
Those improvements do more than save energy.
They help stabilize the temperature of the house.
When heat isn’t rapidly escaping through the attic in winter or pouring back through the ceiling during summer, the heating and cooling equipment doesn’t have to constantly play catch-up.
Now combine that tighter, better-insulated house with modern variable-capacity equipment.
That’s where comfort can really change.
THE OLD WAY
An older furnace might be around 70% efficient and use a traditional fixed-speed or multi-speed blower motor.
The thermostat calls for heat.
The burners come on.
The blower comes on.
You feel the warm-air blast.
The thermostat becomes satisfied.
Everything shuts down.
Then you wait for the temperature to fall enough to start the process again.
THE NEW WAY
The Amana 97% AFUE modulating variable-speed furnace works differently.
Rather than operating like a simple ON/OFF switch, its modulating gas valve can adjust the amount of heat being produced according to the heating demand.
On a slightly chilly fall day, your house doesn’t need the same amount of heat it needs on a 5-degree January morning.
So instead of unnecessarily firing at full output every time, the furnace can spend more time operating at lower capacity.
Then there’s the blower.
The Amana uses an efficient variable-speed ECM, electronically commutated motor.
Instead of simply jumping from OFF to a high blower speed, the airflow system can gently ramp up and down according to heating or cooling demand.
It can also be configured for continuous low-speed air circulation.
The idea is simple:
Don’t wait for the house to become uncomfortable and then blast it with hot or cold air.
Maintain the temperature more gradually.
You may hear and feel the system much less.
What you should notice is:
You’re comfortable.
AND THE ECM MOTOR SAVES ELECTRICITY
There is another advantage.
Older furnace blowers commonly used PSC-style motors.
U.S. Department of Energy research has estimated that replacing a traditional fixed-speed PSC furnace-fan system with a properly designed variable-speed ECM system can reduce furnace-fan electricity consumption by roughly 30%.
At Independence Power & Light’s residential winter energy rate, that can mean additional electrical savings over the heating and cooling seasons.
The exact savings depend on operating hours, duct static pressure and how the system is configured.
And here’s something important:
The blower-motor savings aren’t the biggest part of the story.
The bigger opportunity comes from making the entire house work together.
Remember our 1,500-square-foot example from the last two weeks?
We started with:
• An older 70% efficient furnace
• Approximately 20% assumed attic air leakage
• Only about R-16 to R-19 attic insulation
Then we:
• Sealed the attic leakage
• Increased insulation toward R-60
• Replaced the old furnace with a 97% Amana modulating variable-speed furnace
Our modeled heating cost dropped from about:
$1,470 PER HEATING SEASON
to approximately:
$760 TO $780
A potential reduction of roughly:
$690 TO $710 PER HEATING SEASON
in our example.
That’s close to a 47% to 48% reduction in variable natural-gas heating cost.
But Week 4 isn’t really about the money.
It’s about what happens to the comfort.
Seal the leaks.
Improve the insulation.
Replace old incandescent lighting with efficient LEDs where appropriate.
Use variable-capacity heating and cooling.
Use an ECM blower to gently circulate and mix the air throughout the house.
Instead of constantly experiencing:
Too hot.
Too cold.
Hot-air blast.
Cold-air blast.
the goal becomes something much simpler:
You don’t really notice the heating and cooling system operating.
You just feel comfortable.
And when summer returns, the same principle applies.
The Amana S-Series inverter air conditioner uses variable-speed inverter technology rather than simply operating at full capacity every time it comes on.
Amana currently rates its AXV9S S-Series at up to 19 SEER2.
Combine variable-capacity cooling with the variable-speed ECM blower, better insulation and reduced air leakage, and now the entire house begins working as a system.
That’s what we’ve been building toward with The Independence Energy Watch.
Not just a more efficient furnace.
Not just a more efficient air conditioner.
A more comfortable and more efficient home.
THE INDEPENDENCE ENERGY WATCH
A Homeowner Information Series from Morton Heating And Cooling And Plumbing serving Independence area homeowners family owned since 1950 816-254-5671
Technical references: Amana Heating & Air Conditioning and U.S. Department of Energy. Dollar figures are modeled examples. Actual operating costs and savings vary by home, weather, duct system, insulation, air leakage, thermostat settings, equipment sizing and utility rates.
