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If your power goes out you're not running a natural gas furnace anyway
by bluedino 5y ago
If your power goes out you're not running a natural gas furnace anyway
- azinman2 5y agoWhy not? Mine growing up worked despite power outages IIRC.
- bluedino 5y agoYou need electricity for the blower motor to force the air through the ducts of your house
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago~30% of the NYC area is still probably running steam heat which just uses physics to get where it's needed. Depending on the system size a car battery and inverter can run a forced hot water system for a pretty long time. Forced hot air is gonna be worse than that but the electricity to run the blower is still peanuts compared to a heat pump system.
- captainoats 5y agoThe original comment is comparing to radiator heat not forced air.
- _dark_matter_ 5y agoMy boiler system has an electric pump. I'm not sure my boiler would run without electricity either.
- zip1234 5y agoForced air natural gas furnaces need electric power for ignition and the blower motor that moves hot air out of the combustion chamber.
- throwawaysea 5y agoMost high efficiency gas furnaces use an electric ignition system and cycle on/off based on thermostat input. It does seem like they should have a battery backup or a way to manually ignite it in an emergency, but most don’t as far as I know. However if they’re just on already and continuously running rather than cycling, then they don’t need electricity. These furnaces are also typically coupled with a fan (a blower) to force the air through ducting and take air back through a return vent. Those also tend to be electric.
- djrogers 5y agoGas furnaces can heat water or oil for radiators too, which requires no fan.
- mbreese 5y agoWater radiators often have a pump attached to force the hot water to move more than with a gravity system. A couple years ago, the pump on our radiator boiler went out. Only half of my house ended up with heat without it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]