Hahaha yea you know we always talk on here about our bikes running lean and rich, well these new efficient 90+ furnaces have zero tolerances for anything going wrong. The filters need to be clean, and the drains need to be draining all the time. Propane and natural gas furnaces produce a lot of moisture. if you have ever slept in a travel trailer with a gas furnace you know what I am talking about. That along with the fact that the roof exhausts had no water straight in diversion can really cause problems. We get 120 inches of rain a year here, for the life of me I don't know why the furnace installer didn't at least put a 90 on the roof pointing away from the south where we get 90% of the rain/wind. So in the last month I have had two heat exchangers fail after 14 years both in the same month. Over time with water, dust over water (which turns to mud) and the amount of rain water really takes a toll. So now it is even more important to make sure that the air coming in and the exhaust going out is up to brand new specs. And to make sure that the condensate traps are flowing like they should be. Looks like less posting and more actual maintenance is in order. Fortunately since our budget is shot, the director sent an e-mail to the right people at the university and asked for some emergency funds to pay for these two furnaces. $3500 each YIKES!!! They approved the money today. That's good.

Here are a few pics of what I have been up to lately. It's certainly a wake up call to really tighten my procedures and keep these things clean.




That's the furnace sitting in my shop, well its all apart now.

This is where it was.....



Here is the heat exchanger where the exhaust is supposed to get out, and as you can see the exhaust was not getting out so it backs up in the furnace and either causes the roll out switch to shut the furnace down or it cracks the heat tubes...or both as you will see in the following pics.



What you see there is over time, water along with dust that turns the exchanger into a sludge factory.

Heat tubes before I took them out. and no you can't even buy a new heat exchanger, they won't even talk about it. Its like the emissions on a car, try buying one small part and see what you run into.


If you look real close you can see the crack, this picture shows it better.


I had one of these Carbon Monoxide detectors with me in one of the apartments that the furnace feeds, and the numbers jumped up to 200 real fast. Its a good thing we had nobody staying with us right now, otherwise they might have become real sick of worse.



And thus ends another ride-less report by deej.

 

deej doing work?

 

oh yeah i don't know about washington but here in cali they don't sell kids bikes or parts for them anymore cuz of the stupid goverment. so the 125 would be your best bet.

 

Another example of the "Man" trying to keep us down....

 

yup. you can get aftermarket parts but OEM.

 

So Deej...Did you JB it?

 

JB weld? LOL riiiiiiiiight Nope, you can't even get all the gaskets to put this thing back together. And you can't even buy a whole heat exchanger, there should be a sticker on the furnace that reads there are no serviceable parts inside. I can change inducer motors, control boards, fans and gas valves all day, but once you take the thing apart down to the heat exchanger, it just became a parts donor. The good news is that I just gained about $800.00 in parts that I can use on the other 9 furnaces that I have here at work.

 

So Deejer, are you going to replace the useless furnace with the same brand?

 

Its not the fault of the furnace. Would it be your bike's fault if you didn't take care of it properly? The furnaces are great units..."huh huh huh he said unit." these are 14 years old, and I need to step up my maintenance program a little that's all.

 

Furnace?

What do you use that for? Is it some kind of smoker? How do you keep it from getting your indoor space warm?