Furnace is dead

[reuben.ahmed]

Fawwwwk!! I'll be watching the Bengals with my fireplace on. To me this is bad karma and will get offset by good karma with the Bengals winning tonight.

It also gives me an excuse to wear my AJ Green hoodie in the house, I'm usually in tshirt/shorts. This is all good news for the Bengals and bad news for my pocket book.

A company will come (hopefully today) to clean/inspect it. A new furnace is likely going to set me back 8000, I hope to avoid it. It's 8 years old and I haven't treated it the best, though.

It's going to get cold in Cleveland tomorrow!

[*jason*]

Does you thermostat operate on batteries?  If so, it may be as simple as changing them, and your furnace filter.  If it's clogged, and those batteries are low, it won't kick on.








Or you may need a whole new ****** furnace....

[Nebuchadnezzar]

If the fan won't kick on, turn the breaker off to the furnace so there's no electricity getting to it. Grab a wrench and tap the side of the fan motor a few times. Turn the electricity back on and see if it starts. Your fan motor just might be stuck and it needs unstuck. You may still need a new fan, but at least it will get you some heat into the house.

This happened to me a couple years back and it's been fine ever since, but I have electric heat and wish I had gas heat. Electric heat stinks bad, I can't stand it. They call it a "Cool Heat" which makes no sense, lol.

[reuben.ahmed]

Thanks for the tips! I did some debugging of the led codes and opened the unit up. It looks like the igniter is busted. Driving across town to get a new part. This doesn't bode well for the Bengals karma lol.

I have to decide if the Bengals have a good enough chance of winning tonight if I should drive to my dad's house after fixing the furnace, so we can witness our first playoff win I'm basically firrver, together.

What are the chances? It's a 2.5 hour drive. That should get some bengaks karma back.

[Beaker]

(01-09-2016, 01:40 PM)reuben.ahmed Wrote: Thanks for the tips! I did some debugging of the led codes and opened the unit up. It looks like the igniter is busted. Driving across town to get a new part. This doesn't bode well for the Bengals karma lol.

Youre looking at it all wrong. This is a strong sign for good Bengals karma. One of the Bengals greatest victories was in the Freezer Bowl!

[Bengalsrob]

(01-09-2016, 02:09 PM)Beaker Wrote: Youre looking at it all wrong. This is a strong sign for good Bengals karma. One of the Bengals greatest victories was in the Freezer Bowl!

He is looking at it wrong. Drive to Cincy, mug a Steeler fan, and go to the game!!

[SunsetBengal]

Wait, you have a perfectly good fire place, yet you pay for energy to run your furnace??

[reuben.ahmed]

I wish I got my dad and I tickets. This is our best shot in the Dalton era at winning a playoff game, even with AJM at the helm.

[fredtoast]

(01-09-2016, 10:55 AM)reuben.ahmed Wrote: It's 8 years old and I haven't treated it the best, though.

Furnace should last a lot longer than 8 years.

[fredtoast]

(01-09-2016, 04:10 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Wait, you have a perfectly good fire place, yet you pay for energy to run your furnace??

I used to have a fireplace that sucked more heat out of the house than it added.

[reuben.ahmed]

The fireplace also doesn't circulate heat through the house, just through the main room it's in. I fixed the furnace, unfortunately, lol.

[jfkbengals]

(01-09-2016, 04:51 PM)reuben.ahmed Wrote: The fireplace also doesn't circulate heat through the house, just through the main room it's in. I fixed the furnace, unfortunately, lol.

It can if you have a good blower and ceiling fans.

If you don't know what it is, it is basically a log cradle made of hollow metal pipes that are tied to a fan system that sits outside the fireplace.  The fan will pull cold air from ground level into the system and through the pipes of the cradle, which are now hot from the fire.  The cradle heats that cold air and then the fan blows it out into the room.

Ceiling fans set to the winter setting (low speed and clockwise) will push the hot air at the ceiling out to and down the walls, and thus through entryways into adjoining rooms.  Ceiling fans in those rooms will do the same to the next room.

My dad was a cheapskate who hated to use the heat in the house, so the whole house was heated that way.  I've gotta admit, it worked pretty well.

[fredtoast]

(01-17-2016, 09:36 PM)jfkbengals Wrote: My dad was a cheapskate who hated to use the heat in the house, so the whole house was heated that way.  I've gotta admit, it worked pretty well.

My parents are in their 80's and they still use a wood stove to heat their house.  They originally did it to save money, but my mom also likes it because she is subject to getting chilled and she likes the fact that she can sit right next to the stove and get heated up quickly.  You can't get that from standing over a heater vent.

they live in a split level house and the stove is at the bottom of the stairs so the heat just naturally rises up to the main level of the house.

[reuben.ahmed]

(01-17-2016, 09:36 PM)jfkbengals Wrote: It can if you have a good blower and ceiling fans.

If you don't know what it is, it is basically a log cradle made of hollow metal pipes that are tied to a fan system that sits outside the fireplace.  The fan will pull cold air from ground level into the system and through the pipes of the cradle, which are now hot from the fire.  The cradle heats that cold air and then the fan blows it out into the room.

Ceiling fans set to the winter setting (low speed and clockwise) will push the hot air at the ceiling out to and down the walls, and thus through entryways into adjoining rooms.  Ceiling fans in those rooms will do the same to the next room.

My dad was a cheapskate who hated to use the heat in the house, so the whole house was heated that way.  I've gotta admit, it worked pretty well.

I've acatually run the fan in the winter setting at high speed. I didn't think low speed was enough, at high speed I feel a little bit of air against me (with the fireplace on). I'll try at a lower speed, it does seem to help. I have a great room, so the fan is 20ft up in the air.

The other tip I found was making sure your furnace fan is set to ON (instead of Auto). It can still circulate the hot air your fireplaces are putting out, into the rest of the house. I think the smart programmable thermostats (NEST/etc) automatically do things like this to try and save money. e.g. they shut the AC down early but still run the fan, knowing there's still some coolant/cold air left in the vents that can be pushed out.

I've looked into installing a blower on the fireplace. I should probably get that done sometime. Thanks for the tips!

[fredtoast]

(01-18-2016, 12:53 PM)reuben.ahmed Wrote: I've looked into installing a blower on the fireplace. I should probably get that done sometime. Thanks for the tips!

It is very messy to try and heat with wood.  You have to have a place to stack the wood, and you have to haul ashes out of the house.

If you have access to free wood you can cut yourself then it might be worth it, but it will not be that cheap to just add a blower to your fireplace.  Also do you have a way to open and close the flu?  Do you have a masonry (brick) chimney or just a metal pipe.  You may need a masonry chimney if you are going to have big hot fires.

The house that I just moved out of had a "decorative" fireplace and I just had it completely removed.  I built bookshelves into the space where the fireplace was and made a closet out of the space behind it.  I had this done when a leak developed in my roof around the "chimney" on my roof.  It was just a wooden box with a metal pipe coming out of it.  I had them tear off the box and shingle over it.

[jfkbengals]

(01-18-2016, 12:53 PM)reuben.ahmed Wrote: I've acatually run the fan in the winter setting at high speed. I didn't think low speed was enough, at high speed I feel a little bit of air against me (with the fireplace on). I'll try at a lower speed, it does seem to help. I have a great room, so the fan is 20ft up in the air.

The other tip I found was making sure your furnace fan is set to ON (instead of Auto). It can still circulate the hot air your fireplaces are putting out, into the rest of the house. I think the smart programmable thermostats (NEST/etc) automatically do things like this to try and save money. e.g. they shut the AC down early but still run the fan, knowing there's still some coolant/cold air left in the vents that can be pushed out.

I've looked into installing a blower on the fireplace. I should probably get that done sometime. Thanks for the tips!

If your return duct is in or near the room with the fireplace it works great.  If it is some distance away, then it doesn't really help a whole lot.  It also depends on where the air handler is located.  If it is in a cold location, it can cool off the hot air before it can be distributed throughout the house, the complete opposite of your goal.

[reuben.ahmed]

I think it worked, but I don't know lol. I left the house for 4 or 5 hours and had the fan set to ON and heat on. It's in single digits in Cleveland right now. I came home to a toasty house. Usually it's only this toasty if I had the fireplace on. The whole house was evenly hot, that is actually amazing considering the upstairs is usually cold. I'm surprised if it was just the fan being on the whole time, but I'll take it.

The fireplace downstairs is a gas fireplace, no wood. I did buy this for the morning room, it's amazing and it was not fun to install - required a dedicated 240V circuit, but it puts out a lot of BTUs and it looks amazing.