Crude oil, from which heating oil is refined, is set to average $34.60 per barrel in 2016, representing a steep drop from the $93.17-per-barrel average of 2014.
Tightening a home’s envelope may reduce the air supply needed for combustion, and when there’s not enough combustion air, equipment could have combustion ventilation problems. Thus, the people who sealed up homes (often referred to as the weatherization industry) needed a way to determine if sealing a home up would undermine the safe operation of combustion equipment. To meet this safety need, they embraced combustion appliance zone (CAZ) depressurization testing.
According to HVAC manufacturers, customers are looking for highly efficient furnaces that shave dollars off their utility bills while providing the best possible levels of comfort. As a result, most furnaces displayed at the AHR Expo were designed to meet these market demands.
As technology improves, portable equipment manufacturers will continue to work to meet the growing needs of their customers, from those needing small-scale residential solutions all the way up to data centers and factories in need of industrial-grade solutions.