Chilly Temperatures / Furnace Woes*

              The temperature outside was 47° this morning. The house temperature was 55°. There is a reason for this. It is always something when you are a homeowner.

The furnace has been running for the past few weeks. Searching up some supplies in the basement the other day I noticed there was a new noise from one of the motors. I made a mental note that the draft inducer fan was going to need oiling when I could get to it. After my morning work out at the “Y” I got home and while logging in my time and meters on the Concept 2 site I thought the house seemed a bit cooler than usual.

Checking out the furnace sure enough: I found the draft inducer motor was VERY hot to the touch and frozen up. DAMN! Killed the power the unit and dismantled the motor assembly. The fan wheel was in pieces. The last time I was working on this I noticed there was a LOT of corrosion on this fan. This furnace is 17 years old now so I guess I should not complain. Now comes the fun part. Heating and air conditioning repairs are usually so expensive, and I hate to pay out a service call for a repair I know I could do just as well.

The first order of business was to separate the wheel from the motor. This was frozen in place. The angle grinder was used to cut the wheel off. Then the remaining hub was thinned out and cracked off in the vice. I tested out the motor and it seemed OK.

The big problem is getting the replacement parts. Furnace parts are not a part of the inventory of the big box stores. I’m thinking Homo Depot and Blowes don’t want "do-it-yourselfers" working on furnaces. I was able to find some approximate replacements on line, but most of the on-line suppliers just use part numbers with no dimensions of the parts. I could not find any part number for what I needed.

I contacted my favourite appliance part supply house around the corner from me. They said they could round up the needed parts for me. I brought in the motor and what remained of the wheel along with the service manual of the furnace which I assumed had all the needed model information. It turned out I needed more explicit information of the model which was listed on the unit.

Returning home I went over that furnace with a fine tooth comb and finally found the numbers inside just by the igniter. I contacted Jeff at the appliance supply with the information. He got back to me and informed me it would be $189.00 for a motor and wheel unit. That seemed to be a fair price, I told him I’d take it. I went to the store to pick it up. Here… I’m assuming Jeff is acting as an agent for me purchasing this from the heating and cooling supply that does not deal with the public. I was at the store when he called back. It turned out the supply house only had the motor which was the $189.00. They did not have the wheel in stock which ended up being $115.00. I had found a wheel on line that was $70.00 before postage, so this was not that much out of line pricewise. I bit the bullet and bought the wheel which hopefully will be delivered today.

I gave the motor assembly a good cleaning and oiling with turbine oil. It is running smooth and strong so hopefully it will last well into the future. As much as I’m complaining, in doing my research on line, I found entries on some message boards where people were charged many, many hundreds of dollars for just this kind of repair.

The gas logs are keeping the house from being really uncomfortable temperature wise. Things could be so much worse.

This furnace drama pretty much halted my “upstairs work” yesterday. I’ll get back to the upstairs projects today. The outside temperatures are supposed to be warming up a bit so I can give the gas logs a break!

*Saturday morning. Here I thought Open Diary was getting better. I just got a private note telling me my entry was not showing up as new and to put an * in the title…..it is always something here!!!!!!!