Tarkblog

Yesterday was the coldest day of the year so far.

And it was about 7:00 last night when I realized that my house was a tad on the cold side. When I went to check the thermostat setitng, I realized that it was set appropriately - but that house wasn’t getting warm.

More appropriately, the thermostat was set to 70 - the house was at 64. So, I went and looked at the furnace, and the status lights were blinking in a strange way. I went and looked up in the book - the code meant “flame not sensed - protection mode”. So, I reset the furnace to watch what was happening.

It would go through its normal startup procedure - the combustion air fan kicked on, the primary gas valve opened, the secondary purge valve opened. The igniter fired up, then the gas lit. Flame would shoot for about 4 seconds, and then the whole thing would kick off.

It repeated this process a few times, then stopped.

I didn’t have much time to spare, if I was going to get this thing fixed before all of the stores closed. I looked through the book, and deduced that the reason it was kicking off was that the flame sensor was not sensing the flame. I looked, and saw nothing wrong with the flame sensor - it was directly in the path of the flame. The wire connected to it looked fine, and it was still routed to the circuit board okay.

Suck.

I deduced I probably just needed to buy another flame sensor. So, I set out on a quest to find one.

ACE true value. Nope.

Menards. Nope.

Lowes. Nope.

Suck. It was almost 8, and I was running out of options. I thought that perhaps one of the furnaces at work would have one I could “borrow” for the night. So, I called the bossman and explained the situation to see what his thoughts were.

He told me I was screwed. He said the only thing I would be able to do for the night is to use space heaters and my oven to keep the house moderately warm. Since I have a heated waterbed, this wasn’t a big deal for me. So, I swung buy his house and picked up a couple of spare space heaters to use, plus my own. I got back home and got them started. The house was at 62.

I went back and started fiddling with the furnace again to see what I could accomplish. I took out the flame sensor and examined it. Nothing looked wrong, visibly. I took some steel wool and cleaned it off, then I put it back and attempted to reposition it so that the flame hit it on a different spot than normal.

I fired up the furnace, and it worked! Oh man, I was happy. Still, I didn’t know if it would last me through the night. So, I kept the space heaters on, just in case.

So, a word of warning to all of you with gas heat. Make sure you’re prepared for the worst, in case it comes. I’m going to get a spare flame ignitor while I’m at it today, because I want to take every precation I can against a cold cold house.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 21st, 2004 at 8:22 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.