People ask what a recovery ventilator costs to install and hear a range that could mean anything. So here are two scope sheets instead: a bluff-top walkout above the valley and a house in the old village, same appliance, same standard of work. Seven lines diverge, six are identical, and the divergent ones are the whole story.
Furnace Direct scopes and installs licensed recovery ventilators across Afton, the river valley, and the bluffs above it. Nothing on this page is for sale; the comparison exists so you can read your own quote critically before you accept it.
| Scope line | Bluff-top walkout | Village house, small lot |
|---|---|---|
| Distance from cabinet to the two terminations | Mechanical room in a walkout corner, the only sheltered elevation two levels up and around a corner. Long duct run, two framing bays opened, one soffit built back. | Furnace in a stone-walled basement with grade-level sill windows; both terminations land on the nearest gable within fifteen feet. Short run, no soffit work. |
| This single line moves more labour than the appliance choice ever does. | ||
| What has to be opened and patched | A finished lower-level ceiling and one closet soffit. Drywall patch and paint are scoped as separate hours, and we say plainly whether we do them or whether a finisher should. | Nothing finished to open. Joists and sill are exposed, which also means the hangers land fast. |
| Opening and closing a finished surface is the most common reason two identical appliances produce very different days. | ||
| Termination siting and weather detail | Exposed above the valley, so hood selection, flashing, and separation from the furnace flue all get extra care, and the preferred elevation is the sheltered one even when it is not the closest. | Sheltered between neighbouring structures and mature trees. Standard hoods, standard flashing, but tighter setbacks limit which wall is legal. |
| Exposure buys detail work; density buys constraint. Both cost time, for opposite reasons. | ||
| Electrical supply to the cabinet | Panel is on the same level as the mechanical room; a short dedicated run, straightforward. | Panel across an old basement with a low header and knob-and-tube remnants nearby that have to be identified and avoided before anything new is pulled. |
| Old service entrances slow the electrical line down far more than long new ones do. | ||
| Condensate handling | Floor drain within a few feet of the planned cabinet location. One trap, done. | No nearby drain. Condensate needs a small pump and a routed line, which is parts plus labour plus a sensible place for it to discharge. |
| This is a small line that surprises people, and it is entirely a function of where the drain already is. | ||
| Integration with what is already there | Recent sealed-combustion furnace, clean return plenum, documented duct layout. Tie-in is predictable. | Older ducting, at least one undersized return, and a bare outdoor-air duct teed into the return by a previous owner that has to come out and be capped properly. |
| Removing somebody's earlier attempt at ventilation is real work and it shows up on more village scopes than bluff scopes. | ||
| Access, parking, and how the day is staged | Long private drive, a gate, and a grade the truck cannot back down. Material gets carried, and in deep winter the drive has to be clear before the crew commits to the day. | Street parking within thirty feet of the door, but a narrow stair and a tight landing that make the cabinet itself awkward to get in. |
| One pays in distance, the other pays in geometry. Neither is avoidable, and both are predictable from a survey. | ||
These are not upsells and they do not vary by neighbourhood. If a competing quote is materially cheaper, the first thing worth checking is which of these six it quietly left out — commissioning and the second termination are the two that go missing most often.
Any figure low enough to be attractive describes the village basement with the short run and the exposed joists. Any figure high enough to be safe describes the bluff walkout with the opened ceiling and the long route. Printing either one tells you nothing about the house you actually own and sets up a conversation that starts with a correction. We would rather walk the mechanical room, measure the route, and hand you one flat installed number we will hold — and tell you before the visit which of the seven divergent lines we expect to be the expensive one at your address.
Which sheet is yours? Four photographs usually settle it.
Send photos and get a scopeStand in the mechanical room and look for three things. First, how far is the nearest exterior wall that a ladder can safely reach from outside, and is anything finished between here and there? Second, is there a floor drain within a few feet, and is the panel on this level? Third, is anything already teed into the return? A house that answers "close, nothing finished, drain right there, nothing teed in" is the village column and a predictable day. A house that answers "around two corners, finished ceiling, drain upstairs, there is a damper somebody added" is the bluff column, and the scope will say so plainly rather than discovering it at eight in the morning.
Because a range is the least useful honest thing we could print. The low end describes a short run in an open basement and the high end describes a long run through finished space, and neither tells you which one you own. Two complete sheets side by side let you recognise your own house and see which lines are about to be expensive.
Barely. The two technologies install nearly identically: same balanced pair of ducts, same two terminations, same commissioning. Core choice changes the appliance and sometimes the condensate detail. It is not where the money in a quote lives, which is why we work the core question out separately from the cost question.
Only staging and access. The house is the job; a shop or a barn is a separate conversation with its own ventilation logic. What acreage does change is the winter approach — a long gravel or grass drive needs to be passable for a truck carrying a cabinet, and we would rather confirm that than send a crew out on faith.
The age mostly shows up in the electrical and integration lines: older service, older ducting, and more previous owners who tried something. Stone or rubble foundations also affect how and where we can penetrate. None of it is a problem, and all of it is better found on a survey than on install day.
Four photographs: the mechanical room wide enough to show clearances above and beside the furnace, the return plenum including anything teed into it, the nearest exterior wall at grade, and the panel. If there is an existing cabinet, the data plate. That set answers most of the divergent lines on this page without a visit.
We will commit to a flat installed number after a survey and hold it, barring something genuinely hidden like asbestos-wrapped duct or a structural surprise. We will not commit to a number from a phone call, because the honest version of that number is a guess wide enough to be useless to you.
Tell us where the cabinet would hang and what sits between it and the outside. You get a flat installed number, not a range.
These pages choose between the two technologies first — by matchup, by material, by project queue — and leave the scope arithmetic until afterwards.