K. Close III

Half handyman, half hapless

Friday, November 18th, 2005 | LiveJournal Archives

So this past week we determined that our furnace was not furnacing. Regardless of what we set the thermostat at in the house, it never got warmer than 55° so I knew there had to be something wrong. I looked up the symptoms online and determined that something was wrong with the flame sensor. I found out that it can be removed and cleaned and that might fix the problem, but after a thorough cleaning with some sandpaper yesterday, still no flame detection. Basically, the flames that are supposed to heat the forced air, come on but go right back off because the furnace doesn’t realize they are on at all. So to keep the house from blowing up, it shuts off the gas.

Something in the sensor system is flawed. I need to get someone out to look at it or it won’t ever work and if it gets any colder, its gonna get pretty unbearable. Last night we had a roaring fire in the fireplace, and even then it barely warmed the living room. Fireplaces just aren’t designed to heat rooms and houses anymore. We also blew through almost all of our wood last night too, so even if we wanted to have another fire, we’d have to go find more wood (anyone know where we can get cheap firewood in the Denton area?).

Anyway, we also had a toilet that was running pretty much 24/7 because of a faulty fill valve. Of course I didn’t know that it was a faulty fill valve until after I went online and looked up the symptoms. The toilet just kept filling the tank past the fill line and just dumped water through the overflow valve. So yeah, on first inspection it was obvious that we needed a new fill valve. Also, the kicker was that the float on the old fill valve would just randomly drop into the water. So we went to Lowes, picked up some stuff to try and clean that flame sensor (which, as I said, didn’t work for diddly), and picked up a new fill valve. I installed the fill valve which took no time at all, and found that now, while it wasn’t overfilling anymore, there was water leaking somewhere else. I finally determined that the flapper was corroded and water was just leaking back into the bowl from the tank – much better than it leaking onto the floor or something like that.

We packed ourselves into the nice warm car and went back out to Lowes to get a flapper. Of course, we made the mistake of not taking the original flapper with us, so we had to guess blindly at what flapper to get. We must have guessed correctly because its in and everything was fine as of this morning. Still no heat, but at least our water bill shouldn’t be 6 times what it normally is.

So yeah, I still don’t want to have to pay someone to fix my furnace, but its gonna get cold eventually, and we can’t camp out by the fireplace every night. I’m just concerned that its going to be the chip board that controls the entire furnace system. I hear those can cost $300 before labor costs. Stupid furnace.

Filter – Cancer – Title of Record

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