No heat....help with furnace question, please!

What you have is a hole in the heat exchanger - which is the metal that separates the flame from the house air. This IS bad and means the furnace is in need of replacement. To be legal, since you are now aware of the problem you need to disclose it on your property disclosure form. You would not want the buyers to call out the repair man and have him say oh I was out here last winter, I told the owner it needed replacement.

A typical home inspector won't usually look inside the heat exchanger, but they will note that the furnace is ancient and due for replacement. It might be a good idea to go ahead and replace it, since the buyer might ask/demand it anyway, and it will look better if it's replaced up front.

One other thing to be aware of is that the home warranty insurance the buyer would have typically will not cover known defects and if a home inspector reports an appliance as in need of replacement, they will not cover replacement of it. This was explained to me by a home inspector at one of my home purchases. He was careful to word his report to still allow things to be covered, but I'm sure not all inspectors would do that.

If you shop around, you can find a replacement 80% efficient furnace for around $500, and you can probably also find someone to install it for a few hundred dollars.

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At this point, I can't come up with $500, nor get a loan for $500. I can always offer to replace the furnace as part of the sellers agreement, though. Maybe that will be better because it is more upfront.

Trying to build this other house has killed me. It's been nearly 5 years now!!! I buy one thing at a time as I can afford it, and paid cash for most of it. The only thing I financed was the basement, and that will be paid off when I sell this house in town.

Yesterday, I bought the pressure tank, switch, and all the plumbing needed to hook that up, plus a bit more wiring (service line...woohoo!!!) so I'm slowly getting there (and that's why I don't have the $500 for a furnace now!). At least it's dry inside now. I still have about 1/3 of the siding to do yet, but waiting for warmer weather....can't do vinyl when it is below freezing! I break too much of it.

I should have kept track of how many times you guys (and gals!) walked me through various problems and questions with the new house. Starting from the purchase of the land, through septic systems, and roof designs, etc. And still helping me!!!!!

My heartfelt thanks!

I think you're on the right track. Declare that you know the furnace is bad, get a few estimates on replacement, and state that you'll give the buyer an allowance at closing to get it replaced after the sale closes. This is pretty common I believe.

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For safety's sake please call a furnace guy. We had to have one out here last week. We're way out in the boonies. It cost less than $200.

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Well, it seems to be running now, but the exhaust blower (or whatever you call the one that comes on first and causes the pressure to trip the circuit that starts the flame) never, ever shuts off! I have to flip the breaker to get it to shut off. The GOOD thing is that the fire comes on and goes off as needed to maintain temp.

Can that blower running constantly cause a problem? I mean....should I shut it off overnight and let the furnace not work, and turn it on again in the morning? I can't get a repair man out before tomorrow in any case. Can it overheat? It's been running for at least 4 or 5 hours straight now.....

The exhaust blower (real name is draft inducer) can't overheat. It's designed to run constantly if necessary.

Are you certain it's the exhaust fan and not the main blower? Is air coming from the vents in the house? Maybe the repair man set the thermostat to the "fan on" setting?

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I checked again. Now I'm not sure which blower it is. It MIGHT be the main blower, because even when there is no flames, I can feel air coming through my vents in the house. Never COLD air...but not too warm, either. So far, though, the flames come on when needed, and go off as needed, but that darned blower just keeps on going.

That wasn't the original problem, so that's perplexing!

Will THAT blower have problems running constantly?

Is it possible that you have a dirty filter. I doubt if this is the problem but my fan was running constantly on my heat exchanger and found out it is a safety feature to prevent overheating if the filter is dirty. Now mine is brand new (few months old) and I know yours is old and is a gas feature so I doubt that it is the problem. Don't mess with a cracked heat exchanger though I don't care if you do have detectors. If you want to keep running a furnance with a cracked heat exchanger that is just dumb IMO.

I had a cracked heat exchanger this past Jan, repair man red-tagged it and we needed to get another one that day. It sucked, but I'm willing to bet dying of carbon monoxide poisioning is worse.
Now I have a shiny new furnace that hopefully will run nice for many years.

That blower should be fine running constantly(there usually is a fan only setting on your thermostat), although will kill your electric bill. I would turn it off during the day while you are there.

Put a peice of paper over the return air vent and see if it holds the peice of paper up to the grill.

Have you hung anything on the walls (maybe put a nail into the thermostat wire?)

Happened to me many years ago at a different place. Couldn't figure why I was getting so dizzy when I got up in the morning. Would fall down but once I left the house I was OK. I didn't know anything about carbon mon poisoing and the dectors weren't even widely avaliable. Luckily a friend at work suggested I have the furnance checked. They said it was one of the highest readings they had ever got.

Nope, haven't done a thing different. In fact, there isn't a THING hanging on ANY wall because the house is up for sale. The first thing I noticed was that I had no heat, and I couldn't get it started again. Now it runs, but the fan never shuts off. I think it's possessed.

Since I can SEE that hole, can I use JBWeld or something like that to patch it? It's about 1/8" or less, I'd guess. Of course, there may be some I CAN'T see. He looked at it briefly with a camera/probe.

The blower fan: The tech guy left it set on all the time. Not a big deal, will use a little more juice, but might end up with more even heat in the house & less furnace time.....

The hole: Nope. Can't take the heat. It's fine to get by with a lot of things, but this one isn't one to fool around with.

Also if you are trying to sell this place, some backwoods repair on the furnace isn't going to look good to buyers - they will start to wonder what you did to the wires, the plumbing, etc. that isn't right & how bad the house is messed up....

--->Paul

I don't think the tech guy left the fan on, because it wasn't doing that while he was here. In fact, it's working fine now. Cycling when it should. Maybe it needed a day to get a burp out of it's system!? I'm not questioning it.

Another reason that I really hate to replace the furnace until absolutely necessary (besides cost) is that the realtor is trying to sell my house as commercial property, and it will be torn down. Of course, the furnace could be salvaged, but why have that upfront cost, and who wants to buy a used furnace? If for some reason I can't sell it that way, I'll offer to put a new furnace in if it is sold as residential. If I end up having to rent it out this summer.....hmmmm....will have to cross that bridge when I get there.

really sounds like a short in the thermostat wire or a bad thermostat, too many things happening for a short while then working fine. If/when you replace it I would have them replace the thermostat and wire also.

I STRONGLY recommend replacement if the house will be occupied (by you, renter or anyone) You are messing with an odorless gas so you never know when/where it could be building up since each room has a vent. You won't know it until you never wake up from your sleep. And don't forget dogs/cats/pets are also prone to carbon dioxide posioning(sometimes more so than humans)