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jasonresno · Nov 30, 2009, 10:29 PM

OK. This will be a long one guys. Get comfortable.

My wife and I got married in October and purchased our first home as well then. The house checked out fine during the inspection and we were eager to get moved in. As soon as we move in though we started having furnace issues. We would set the thermostat for a certain temperature and go to bed. I'd wake up in the middle of the night freezing and check the vents. They'd be blowing cold air and the temp would have dropped well below the temp we had set. I checked to make sure the fan was set to "auto" and checked out the furnace. Not surprisingly I saw that the pilot light was out. We have an American Standard gas furnace that was installed in 2003.

Ever since then we've reccuringly had this issue. At seemingly random throughout the day the flame will go out but the blower will keep blowing cold air. I had a technician come in to help us out and he pointed out that the roll out switch was popping and thus shutting down the flame. What was interesting, he pointed out, was that the roll out switch on the left side (we have two rollout switches on the front of the furnace) of the furnace was the only one rolling out.

So he cleaned the filters, put in a new roll out switch, and yada yada yada. The same problem persisted. Finally he decided to take a peak at our heat exchange with a wire camera. He then told me he found a crack on three of the four cells in our heat exchange and that we needed to get a new furnace or a new heat exchanger. He gave me a price and told me to get in contact with them.

Well, recently around my town furnace companies have been tricking customers into buying new heat exchangers so I was leery and called in another technician for a second opinion. He looked over the furnace and, when told about the cracked heat exchange, brought out a CO detecting pen that read the PPM of the air to check to see if it was really cracked. He monitored the furnace, the vents, and the rest of the house for a few hours over two different days where the furnace managed to work long enough for us to check it out. His pen came back consistently at 0PPM. He decided that there was no heat exchange issue. But he wasn't sure where to go from there. He left and then has been too busy to come back.

But starting probably three days ago the furnace has been working fine with no issues at all. But I know it's not fixed. We suffered through it not working correctly for two or three weeks and know that it can't magically fix itself.

So I have three very contradictory things happening: one guy says I need a new expensive heat exchanger, the other one swears I don't, and the furnace has chosen to work correctly for now.

I don't want to put my wife or I in potential danger by running a potentially dangerous furnace but there are no indications that it's truly cracked other than the one tech. This is my first home and my wife and I were hoping, as fantastic as it sounds, to have the house cooperate with us. That's the last thing we need to be stressing about.

Any advice is great. Thank you.

hvac1000 · Dec 1, 2009, 01:33 AM

One thing you can make sure of is that ALL the registers are OPEN to allow all the heat the furnace generates to be blown out and all return air openings are open also.

jasonresno · Dec 1, 2009, 08:42 AM

Yup, we've done that as well. We have a very small house (1200 SQ FT). Do you think the furnace is simply too large for our home?

hvac1000 · Dec 1, 2009, 09:22 AM

Do you think the furnace is simply too large for our home?

That is really hard to tell especially since you did not mention

The size of the furnace

The model number of the furnace.

Normally this is not a problem but with my crystal ball broken and in the repair shop I am working without a net.