Poll: when do furnaces fail?

[TC Chris]

Let's do a poll. What day of the week and time of day do heating systems fail? I say that most failures occur on Sunday nights. This past Sunday my sister went to check on my Mom's unoccupied house. She just had a feeling. Sure enough, heading into the driveway she saw the big red "cold temp" light on in the window. Sunday night, 37 deg. in the big house. 19 deg. outside. The guys who put the steam boiler in 2 years ago no longer have an after-hours number. I'm 145 miles away. She rustled up her own plumber who also does maintenance at the comm. college. He came over and put his voltmeter on the 24 V transformer (thermostat & gas valve & igniter control)--no voltage. He couldn't find a cause so she brought over all her elec. heaters. Temps inside were up to 39 by the next a.m. The boiler guys found a hidden fuse.

My heating failures have all been at night too. My boiler guys have an emergency number. But if they need parts....

Has anybody ever had a heating system fail during business hours?

Chris Campbell

[William]

Nope, but knock on wood and say a little prayer, I have never had a furnace fail. I have it serviced ever fall and I guessxi have been real lucky. I probably just jinxed myself.

But, and it is funny to find your post, Chris, as I just got an email from a friend who told me her furnace just quite. Weekend, Christmas, kind if the same thing.

Bill

[electra225]

We have our HVAC systems checked at the beginning of the season each year. Experience shows me that most systems fail when they are poorly maintained or are in service long past their useful life. They fail when you least expect such failure, when you are poorly prepared financially. HVAC systems are something nobody likes spending money on, and are frightfully expensive when you have to.

[danrclem]

I think I've only had a furnace fail one time, but it wasn't the fault of the furnace. I woke on a Christmas Morning well before daylight and the house was very cold. The furnace wasn't working, and it was well below 0 degrees outside. I had a fuel oil furnace, and the fuel had gelled and wouldn't go through the line. The wind was blowing very hard, so it was extremely cold when I went outside to clear the line and it seemed like it was taking forever to get it fixed. I got a metal coat hanger and straightened it out so I could push it up through the line. That got it going but I had to do it again later that morning.

The main heating system I have now isn't likely to break but it sure is a lot of work. I bought A Fisher Grandpa Bear woodstove in the very early 80s and used it a few years at my other house. When I moved in 1988, I put it in the barn until the late 90s and then I started using it again. There were a few years between then and now that I did use my propane furnace but in 2017, I started using the woodstove again. I've been using it ever since, but I did use a propane wall heater a couple times just to get the chill out of the air.

Here's a picture of my old Fisher and a picture of the stove I bought a couple years ago. You can see the fire in the window of the new stove and it does use less wood but the Fisher will be here long after this one is gone. I kind of wish I had kept the Fisher.

[TC Chris]

The latest boiler failure was not a maintenance item. There was a hidden cylindrical glass fuse that was, according to the service guy, unnecessary. He knew where to look for it. The previous boiler there failed at < 10 tears old, a casting defect in one section in my view, but it did so gracefully by leaking. My home hot-water heating boiler failed when a leak developed in valve right over the relay box (bad installer decision about placement!). It had not been leaking when I oiled the flue exhaust fan bearings in the fall. I attribute it to "the perversity of inanimate objects," a cool phrase I read somewhere and remember often.

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

Fortunately, here in the sunny Southwest, we don't have boilers like you guys do back east. We use heat pumps, electric furnaces and natural gas furnaces, all forced warm air systems. Older homes have the furnace on the roof, along with the air conditioner and the swamp cooler. I like Danny's idea. Wood stoves don't cause much trouble, as long as you don't over-fire one. And as long as you keep the birds from making a nest in the chimney.

[TC Chris]

Wood stoves are fine if you are there regularly. If not, in these parts, you would have to turn the water off and drain the pipes, traps, and water heater each time you left. I'm sitting in the summer cottage, generally unoccupied in the winter season. To avoid the freeze hassle, the heat stays on, and we have warning devices in case it fails (it did three years ago). There are two red lights triggered by falling temps, and a phone dialer that calls up to three numbers when the temp drops or the power goes out (it's on a 30-minute delay to deal with brief power outages). And back home, it's nice to come home to a warm dwelling after a day at work, especially if I've done a bike commute. And it's nice to be able to go away on vacation, as I am now.

Chris Campbell

[danrclem]

Most wood stoves do need a lot of attention. My stove would get my house too hot on milder days unless I feed it small amounts of wood at a higher frequency than I would like. There are some stoves with catalytic converters that are supposed to burn for very long periods of time without reloading. I haven't ever had any experience with them and might have bought one if I knew 100% for sure that it would work for me. Blaze King advertises one that they say will burn for up to 40 hrs. but I'm sure that would be under ideal conditions in a controlled test. I'm sure a real-world experience would probably be different. Mine is an EPA stove and it won't do what they claim under normal use.

My old bones are starting to hurt when I do too much (especially handling heavy wood) so I'm thinking about putting in another gas furnace that's more efficient than the one I have. The one in my house is the one that I had put in it when I built the house. If I do, I definitely won't remove the woodstove. I'll use it a lot less and I'll always have my wood storage full or nearly full just in case. I have a 500-gallon propane tank right now but if I went back to using gas as my main source of heat, I'd get another 500-gallon tank so I could buy propane once a year. I love my wood heat, so this is still up in the air.

https://www.blazeking.com/product-category/wood/