Monday, February 13, 2017

High Efficiency Furnace My Foot

The high efficiency furnaces of today seem much more temperamental than their less efficient but far more forebearers.

They apparently become extremely efficient when they are not working as 0% of no energy used being wasted is well 100% efficiency, which is good, right?

I swear this thing breaks down at a minimum at least once every two years - and that is with a maintenance/furnace inspection done every year - and typically it is a control board or pressure switch that fails. This time for variety it was a bearing for a motor. Let's hear it for the Consumers Energy Maintenance plan.

So, the furnace guy came Friday at 11 pm and pronounced the motor that drives the exhaust for the furnace has a bad bearing and thus doth not work and is nailed to its post. This makes the entire furnace not work accordingly as failure to clear carbon monoxide would be a bad thing. Said part was of course not in stock and the only warehouse open Saturday didn't have it so we're expecting the repair to happen this evening.

To say the house is a touch chilly is an understatement, but thankfully it remained above freezing the past few days even as it was a darn cold wind last night.

3 comments:

Knucklehead said...

Mine *a York) is VERY picky about its filters. It sometimes even declares brand new one to be clogged. When it thinks filters are clogged it fails to fire up. Not a big deal, just reset the breaker, unless one is away from home during the winter. Fortunately I've returned home to find the place below freezing. That would be bad.

B said...

I keep a spare motor on the shelf. Takes less than 20 minutes to install. Cost is less than $100. Same with the pressure switch.

we, of course, mostly use the woodstove. But the gas furnace backup is good to have.

Aaron said...

Knucklehead: I change the filters regularly on mine and haven't had that particular error condition...yet.

B: Good idea, but we seem to be going through a rotation of failures on the furnaces and no idea which part will break next.

The parts guys, being seperate form the repair guys apparently dropped off the wrong part last night so we're going to see if they can get it right today.