The first thing you'll want to look at when choosing a furnace for your home are online reviews of local contractors for each brand. Since heating and air conditioning contractors tend to focus on one brand or another, these reviews should factor into your brand purchasing decision. In terms of quality indicators the next thing you should consider is the Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency (AFUE) of a particular model, or the Fleed Efficiency of the brand as a whole. The minimum AFUE is 78% efficienty as set by the US Department of Energy. But you should expect to get closer to 90% with the brands featured in this review.

Trane has several strong home furnace models that work with gas or oil. Looking at one of their most popular natural gas furnaces, the Energy-Star rated XT90 Single Stage Furnace, we see a 90% AFUE (other Trane models go as high as 95%) in a durable unit made to heat average sized homes.

Carrier has a comperable furnace model to Trane's XT90, which is the Comfort 92. This furnace is quieter and comes with all the same warranties, but without the second heat exchanger and only a single speed blower. Carrier does make multi-speed blower models, but the price goes up accordingly.

Lennox is one of the most trusted names in home heating and air conditioning. Their comperable model is the Elite Series G51, which is quiet, efficienty and durable. It too has a secondary heat exchanger and is a very high (for this price range) 92.1% AFUE. Online review sites like Angie's List have very possitive things to say about most Lennox installers, and some of them offer 10-Year Parts and Labor warranties on some furnace models.

Other well-known furnace brands to check out are American Standard, Kenmore and Aire Flo.