A high efficiency furnace uses a different type of venting system because it extracts the heat that remains in those combustion gases before venting the resultant mixture of water and carbon dioxide.
High efficiency furnace exhaust through roof.
This allows your furnace to get more heat out of the gas that it consumes.
The efficiency rating of a furnace is called afue annual fuel utilization efficiency.
You can capture that heat with a high efficiency condensing furnace.
High efficiency furnaces produce high amounts of condensation moisture in the exhaust vent which is designed to run back into and through the furnace in order to drain out into either a floor drain or other approved draining system.
Should my furnace flue pipe go through the roof or the side of the house.
The condition of the chimney is a factor because new super efficient gas furnaces do not vent up the chimney they are vented outdoors horizontally through a wall by a small plastic pipe.
A conventional furnace vents these combustion gases through a vertical exhaust system that is attached to the furnace.
A high efficiency condensing furnace can achieve efficiency ratings of 90 or above.
Read more elaboration about it is given here in respect to this can a high efficiency furnace vent through a chimney.
Traditional gas fired forced air furnaces produce hot combustion exhaust gasses and therefore need metal vent pipes or chimneys.
One side effect of removing that extra heat from combustion gases is that the combustion byproducts are cooled down and released in a liquid form in high efficiency furnaces.
However these combustion gases contain residual heat that is lost through the ventilation.