Choosing the right motor for furnace and water heater projects.
Two typical appliances using draft inducer blowers to improve gas combustion performance and appliance efficiency are the gas furnace and gas water heater. The market for these appliances has been growing rapidly. Like the gas furnace before it, new and proposed legislation mandating reduced gas byproducts and improved efficiency is now pushing the gas water heater to greater use of the power venter blower, a subset of the draft-inducer blower category.
Once you have determined the need for the draft-inducer blower, you must now decide what type of technology to use for the motor. Two motor technologies are in widespread use. These are the PSC and the Shaded Pole motors. A variation of the Shaded Pole motor covered in this article, the full-round type, is the C-Frame motor. The C-Frame motor is also a Shaded Pole motor with lower efficiency, reduced operating life, and a greater tendency for noise. As a subset of the Shaded Pole category, the C-Frame is a lower cost option with exaggerated weaknesses.