Way back in the 1880s, a Norwegian engineer named Edwin Ruud immigrated to the United States and began working for George Westinghouse. At this job, Ruud invented the first automatic gas water heater with a storage tank.
Eventually, Ruud bought the rights to his invention and started his own water heater company, Ruud Manufacturing, in 1897. In the 1950s, Ruud expanded into producing heating and cooling equipment.
From those early beginnings, Ruud has become a leading North American manufacturer of water heaters and HVAC equipment for residential and light commercial use. Today, Ruud offers not only water heaters and HVAC equipment but also heaters for pools and spas, home generators, and smart EcoNet thermostats that integrate and control water heating as well as HVAC.
Ruud’s line of residential HVAC equipment includes air conditioners, heat pumps, gas and oil-burning furnaces, indoor air quality products, and mini-split ductless systems. They offer products with a wide range of efficiencies, some of which are EcoNet enabled for integration into a smart home system.
For example, Ruud offers split air conditioning units with SEER ratings ranging from 15.5 to 20.5. That includes units with single-stage and two-stage compressors, as well as their EcoNet Enabled Ultra Series Variable Speed unit that has a variable-speed Copeland scroll compressor inside it.
Ruud offers a similar range of heat pumps, from their basic Achiever Series Single Stage unit with a 14 SEER rating up to the 20 SEER EcoNet Enabled Ultra Series Variable Speed heat pump. In addition to single-stage, double-stage, and variable-speed heat pumps, Ruud also offers a three-stage 18.5 SEER heat pump.
Gas furnaces from Ruud also come in a variety of styles and efficiencies. While they offer several standard 80% AFUE furnaces, they also offer some higher-efficiency furnaces with ratings as high as 97%. According to Ruud, the newly-patented heat exchanger design used in their Ultra Series high efficiency gas furnace improves airflow so much that it decreases operating noise by 20%.