Having issues with your gas furnace? Come on baby, light my fire!
One thing Jim Morrison didn't do was have to deal with a faulty gas furnace! (I'm fairly certain)
My friend's (we'll call him Chris) furnace has been acting funny for the last two years, turning on and off and rarely blowing any hot air. So he did what any financially conscience person would do, called a friend, me. Of course the call came during the snow storm Seattle experienced just last week and temperatures dropped to 14 degrees at night.
That's COLD for this area! Any ways, everyone in town was swamped and couldn't make it over but we we're offered some advice. The two main problems with a gas furnace would be the thermostat and the ignitor. So Chris bought a Honeywell brand non programmable thermostat and a new type of ignitor that replaces over 110 old ignitors and asked if I could install them since he has no mechanical aptitude what so ever. I took the job at a friend price, free. 5 hours later the (expletive deleted) problem was not fixed.
The instructions for the ignitor said that you might have to adjust the positioning if the flame goes out. Like I said, 5 hours of adjusting and this did nothing! Chris made it through the storm with an abundance of space heaters and in a few days he was able to get a professional service to come check out the problem.
5 minutes and $125 later........ The technician explained to me that every gas furnace has a flame sensor, this one was corroded and he fixed it with sandpaper. A piece of SANDPAPER! Where was this advice when were calling around and searching the internet??? Well it's here now!
If you add the price of the technician, thermostat, and ignitor, the cost is over $200! A piece of sandpaper? About 30 cents.
Hopefully this helps someone in need this winter season. Please shut the gas off to the furnace and the furnace off at the breaker panel before doing any work at all. If you are not comfortable doing the work then call a pro! It's cheaper than the hospital, or blowing yourself up!
Check out these really great tips on winter weather and cars posted by Active Rain Rainmaker Dawn Fabiszack.
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