Cost to Replace Gravity Furnace

[Eric Gutierrez]

Hi,
Has anyone had an experience with the costs related to replacing an old octopus (gravity) furnace with a newer forced air furnace?

[Dan C.]

Hi Eric - I have a duplex that has one of these octopus furnaces. I am pretty sure I will be replacing it next summer, so I went ahead and got an estimate. For the estimate I got there was about $1,400 additional cost because having this old furnace results in extra labor for disposal and removal and additional work to add new ducts.

Often an octopus may have ducts wrapped in asbestos - this will add additional costs for the removal process. In my case I was fortunate that asbestos was not used.

The skinny that I have learned so far is that this type of furnace can last a very long time because they are simpler and have fewer moving parts. The downside is that they don't have safety features that a modern furnace does, and in the words of one furnace expert, when they fail, they can fail spectacularly. So for that reason I decided to be satisfied with the eight addtional years I got out of it since I bought this place, and go ahead with replacing it.