A quieter alternative to gas forced air heating

furnaceheatinghvac

My small 1BR apartment has an old gas furnace that works great, but costs my landlord too much to insure. He plans to install gas forced air, an in-unit upright furnace. I'd love to suggest a comparably priced alternative that will make less noise. What's out there?

edit: Maybe a few self-contained baseboard heaters and\or quartz infrared heaters could do the trick, for a small enough place? Mine is only about 700 sq ft. A similar unit in the building got a Rheem Criterion II gas furnace, so (@HerrBag) I'm afraid 90% may be overly optimistic.

Best Answer

The multi-stage burners are much quieter at low burn, as are multi speed/variable speed blower motors. These features are available for most 90% and higher furnaces.

A nice co-generation water heater (hot water for heat and a super storage unit for potable hot water) would be very quiet, but conversions costs to add radiators would not likely fly.