Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - Self Furnace and A/C installation

Does anyone know of any guides or have any pointers as to replacing a furnace and installing air conditioning?

The best advice is to get it profesionally installed.

If you're going with a high efficiency furnace then it will have to be re-sized to your home as it will be smaller than what's in there "if it's a gas furnace" and the air conditioning takes several specialty tools that a home owner will not have and an EPA license. To add to it you will have no factory warranty on the equipment.

I 2nd of what Matt said.. I used to be in the field myself, and been almost 15 years. I hired it in to replace my equipment.. I could of done it myself, but half of the tool that is used, I don't have to do the job right. And most of all I wanted piece of mind with the warranty for the next 10 years.

The only thing I did myself, was remove the old furnace, a couple of days ahead of time.. Painted the walls in the back corner, the floor under the furnace, and hooked up the wiring and t-stat.

Is there anything I can do, like remove the old one, that will bring down the price? That's probably something I need to bring up with the contractor.

You could ask the dealer if you can remove it to save some money.. I know I did when I did mine.

I might add that if you already have central A/C, you cannot remove that yourself without EPA certification.

The biggest savings will come with proper sizing of the equipment. The old saying of "bigger is better" is true only for the seller of the equipment & those selling the energy to operate the equipment.

There is an excellent heating & cooling load calculation program available for $49 from http://hvaccomputer.com.
By the time you are done you will probably have 8-10 hours invested but it will be the best time & money you can spend.