Quote Originally Posted by mickchick View Post
Furnace AND A/C. Actually, our electric and gas bills have gone down. The newer systems are so much more energy efficient!
Wow, getting 50 years out of a furnace! That's incredible, Bleecker.
Yes, we did central air at the same time as the furnace as well- saves a lot of money to do both at the same time. We work at home, so the air conditioning was very worth it to us- we were suffering terribly before that- even our printers were balking with the soggy paper!

the old furnace was older than 50 years, but the previous owner (now in his late 60's) could only remember that it was already there when he was a boy in grade school. The house is 68 years old, but we don't really know if it was the original furnace or not.
Even though it was still gamely chugging along, we actually performed 'euthanasia' on it during the summer rather than waiting for it to die perhaps in January some year. That way we had time to shop around and carefully plan and schedule the whole purchase and installation instead of doing it as a rushed emergency in the dead of winter while we were without heat.
You're right about the new one being a LOT more efficient. We are saving money now and not wasting heat and oil. But it was a major expense all right.