Stick house furnace repair tips

[Ozz]

Well, it's in the 50's here in Dillon Montana...brrrr. I haven't run my furnace at all, I have my Granger's heater keeping the living room toasty, and a small automatic electric heater in the bedroom cycling on and off.
Those of you at the 'Stick house' mostly have gas heat... I know there are others, electric, heat pumps and other types, wood, so on.
My post is to help understand the most common reasons for a 'no heat' service call. Motors failing, you will easily know when this happens; you have the blower motor, if the heat comes on, no fan after a while, easy diagnose. Just switch on the thermostat 'on' switch, no blow: bad motor. (Around $200.00 plus labor)
Combustion blower motor: when a call for heat, this noisy fan starts up and runs, if you don't hear it come on, it's probably bad.
(around $200 plus labor)
1/2 that if you do it.
The most common problem is a dirty flame rod, (picture below) extremely rare that it needs nothing more than a cleaning with a scotch-bright (Green dish scrubber) Most service guys replace the rod with a $60.00 new one. You can clean it in place.
In a dirty environment, the pressure switches fail. $60 or so.
Another common part that fails is the Igniter, $60-80

Slide show below on Igniter replacment, then movies showing repair.

https://picasaweb.google.com/Jimsue1...eat=directlink

First movie showing defective Igniter
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink

Second movie showing defective part, removed:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink

Third movie showing new part working:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink



Flame rod:




Hope this may help you out.

[CORattler]

If it saves me money, I LOVE it!
Thanks for the tips!!

[drsmart]

Thanks for the tips Ozz. Now is definitely a good time to check.
To use an old phrase, 'You da man!'

Dave

[mlh]

My wife and I took care of her aunts home for her so when her oil furnace quit working after her death we called her repair man. After 8 to 10 visits they had replaced all of the controls on the unit and it still wasn't working. I checked it and found a 8 inch long hole in in the fire box.
I know what you are thinking Ozz and no you are wrong she she had cancer. She didn't die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
My point here is not all repair people are created equal.
Lnnwood

[Ozz]

Sorry that happened, no excuse for the service-people that miss things like this. I have to admit it can be easy to miss some things, you do so many calls that seem simple, you find an obvious problem, fix that and due to pressures related to the job, you don't check further. (Management companies direction to only fix the reported problem, calls backed up, customers wanting to leave, and a hundred others.) BUT, any of us worth a darn, will always fix, or 'Red tag' a dangerous condition.
The 8" hole should have been a first year apprentice find.
There are many misconceptions about cracked heat exchangers, many do NOT let a dangerous amount of CO into the home anything over 50 PPM is considered a danger. I have used my $1500 CO detection meter on some seriously cracked heat exchangers, and had readings in the 10's and 20's. But with a cracked heat exchanger, you get flame lifting, explosive ignition, and a wandering flame. That is almost the only way to quickly find cracks, heat exchangers on gas units are hour-glass shaped, you just can't visually check the center portion, not even with a scope.
CO deaths are almost always caused by a blocked vent; birds, other varmits, or a collapsed vent.
I went into a home that had the vent dis-connected because the tenant thought too much heat was being wasted up the flu.
(They weren't attending any MENSA meetings)

[mlh]

Thanks Ozz. I thought an 8 inch hole would allow all kinds of C02 to escape. I don't know how anybody missed this hole I found it in under 2 minutes. There was a place almost burned through the outer case. My wife gave the house to her cousin. She has a mentally retarded son no money and needed a place to live, and we got rid of a house we didn't wont the responsibility of. It worked ont well for everybody.
Lynwood

[Ozz]

quote:Originally posted by mlh

Thanks Ozz. I thought an 8 inch hole would allow all kinds of C02 to escape. I don't know how anybody missed this hole I found it in under 2 minutes. There was a place almost burned through the outer case. My wife gave the house to her cousin. She has a mentally retarded son no money and needed a place to live, and we got rid of a house we didn't wont the responsibility of. It worked ont well for everybody.
Lynwood

Glad you caught it. I think maybe the 8" hole would bring in CO to the home. That's crazy!
I did a lot of free work for folks like that, wish it could have been in my area, I would have tried to help them.