HVAC problem this morning.

[TN8Man]

I’m always amazed at the people who have spent time or have ties to California.

Just about all my Washington State neighbors have California ties even if it was years ago.

Many first came to Washington via military and decided to stay.

Very different than my grade school years when as much as half my classmates were new transplants…

When I first moved to Tennessee 12 years ago I was asked why I left California because many Tennesseans wanted to live in California. They don't say that anymore. Amazing how fast things like this can change.

 

[2manyrocks]

If you strike oil on the farm, no doubt you want to move to Beverly Hills with all the cement ponds, movie stars, and such.

 

[ultrarunner]

Several of the medical companies I deal with relocated to TN from California… they have no plans to come back…

 

[grsthegreat]

Remember, a lot of western wash state is a little California enclave. We have quite a few neighbors from western Washington that moved here to get away from that.

ill never return to calif, even for a visit.

 

[kenmac]

The pressure switch and all other safeties in the circuit must be connected at initial call for heat...the control board senses that all safeties are closed before starting the ignition cycle.

Never figure out why it's called a pressure switch when it operates on vacuum

 

[dadster4]

Never figure out why it's called a pressure switch when it operates on vacuum

Think of them as pressure differential switches.
The ignition cycle is interesting... 1- All safety switches are checked for closure. 2-the ignitor, or glow plug, is powered to light a pilot flame. 3- The pilot flame is proven by flame rectification whereby a dc voltage is passed through the flame and produces a microvolt ac voltage which the control board senses. 4- The main gas valve is allowed to open as long as the pilot remains lit or the cycle completes.

 

[jyoutz]

I never screw with heat plants. I call my local furnace company that installed our HF condensing furnace last spring and have them deal with it. Been told by a few knowledgeable folks that Goodman furnaces are second rate furnaces. We have a Bryant plus 95. Could have got a Goodman for quite a bit less but didn't.

I had a new Trane 95% efficiency condensing furnace installed 3 years ago. I like the efficiency, but we had some glitches that first season. They installed the water condensing tube to vent on the roof. That worked fine until it got really cold. Then the condensing line would freeze and shut down the furnace. I had them run the condensing line to a plumbing vent pipe inside the attic, and haven’t had any problems since.

 

[jyoutz]

One of the first upgrades to my house was to have a wood burning stove installed. My home is warm in a power outage and I don't pay the high electric bills for heat.

I installed a gas stove fireplace with a pilot light. It puts out nearly as much heat as a wood stove and the pilot light allows it to operate during a power outage (without the blower). With natural gas it’s actually pretty economical to operate. I cut cords of wood as my only heat for over 25 years and I don’t miss those days. The gas fire looks as nice as a wood fire, but without tending.

 

[westcliffe01]

I can remember renting a house in Germany, sight unseen in a small town near where my new job was going to be in Edenkoben Germany. The house was set into a shaded north facing slope with about 140 steps to get from street level to the house. It was heated with oil. Half of the basement was taken up with a massive 2-3000 gal oil tank. It had a simple analog gauge that displayed the fuel level and on the day that I arrived on the property months after I signed all the documents, we went down in the basement with the owner and recorded the fill level of the oil tank by snapping a photo of the gauge with the agreement that I had to return it at the end of the lease at the same level as when received.

The first winter passed without incident and my wife and I started a discussion of setting up a regular deposit into a saving account so that we had the cash on hand to do a re-fill of the tank when the time came. When the following winter arrived, we had hardly got into the heating season before we woke up to the fact that the house was cold and apparently the furnace was not running. We went and looked at the gauge and the needle was showing about 35% full compared to the 50% it had been when we moved in. A technician was called and it was soon revealed that the tank was empty. This was a shock to the owner, since the gauge had previously been reliable. A bit of investigation showed that the gauge housing could be rotated and thus it was possible to place the needle at any point one wanted it at. Only the rotation angle of the scale changed. So the previous tenant had apparently doctored the gauge in an effort to cover up his consumption of fuel oil and the owner had fallen for it and the bad actor was long gone...

Since we knew the tank was currently empty and the capacity of the tank, we re-zeroed the gauge and added 50% to the tank so we had a known fill amount. By turning the gauge back to its original spot, we could back calculate how much the owner had been swindled, how much had actually been in the tank when we took control of the property and agree on the appropriate % fill at the completion of the lease agreement. Later that same winter the boiler controller went out and a new controller had to be installed and a few years after I left Germany the government banned the yellow flame oil burners altogether. Last year they introduced a ban on natural gas heating systems with everyone being phased out to all electric. Government overreach at its finest.

 

[ultrarunner]

Think of them as pressure differential switches.
The ignition cycle is interesting... 1- All safety switches are checked for closure. 2-the ignitor, or glow plug, is powered to light a pilot flame. 3- The pilot flame is proven by flame rectification whereby a dc voltage is passed through the flame and produces a microvolt ac voltage which the control board senses. 4- The main gas valve is allowed to open as long as the pilot remains lit or the cycle completes.

It was so much simpler with a match light floor furnace...

Heck... even a millivolt furnace with thermostat...

I maintain some very old furnaces going back over a 100 years...

The way things are going they could very well be here in another 100 years...