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ripped-off · Dec 17, 2006, 08:13 PM

I just spent $500 repairing my heater/furnace. The guy told me that the board was bad and he replaced it... The heater worked fine for about a week and now th eblower does not work on auto nor when I turn it on manually... Any ideas what could be wrong? I have a strange feeling that the guy fix the heater/furnace and did something to the blower motor so he could get more money out of me in the future... what do you think? Am I paranoid. Should I call him back or get another repairman?

Hopefully some can give me a clue of what is wrong and how much it should cost.

Thanks

rickdb1 · Dec 17, 2006, 08:20 PM

Call him back and have him repair the problem...

letmetellu · Dec 17, 2006, 10:04 PM

I have no idea if he did something to your furnace to make the blower not work or not. But being a man in the business I would give him the benefit of the doubt but since you have the feeling that you have I would not let him work on the furnace again.

Now are you sure that he fixed what was wrong in the first place? I don't know why so many service people jump at the chance of blaming the circuit board for every problem that goes wrong with a furnace. Could it be possible that the replaced the board and then found out that he did not repair the problem and then looked for something else and maybe oiled a motor or something thinking that was the real problem, but it only lasted two weeks.. . You don't have much choice to call a tech man and let him repair it or give some good information on here and maybe one of the people on here can guide you.

ripped-off · Dec 17, 2006, 11:32 PM

I called and left a message for the guy.. Hopefully he can look at it for free, since he charged me 4 hours of labor to change the board. But my gut feeeling is he will try to scam me for more servive hours. What do you guys think is a good break-even point in terms of reparing a furnace and buying a new one. My furnace is 20 years old and I already spent $500 on the board and don't wwant to keep spending money if I will need a new furnace I a few years anyway. I donlt really know how long a furnace should last

labman · Dec 18, 2006, 04:47 AM

One factor in the repair/replace question is how efficient is the furnace? If it is a 60% one, the heat exchanger is just one large round housing, then you can add savings on gas with a newer 80-90% efficient one to savings on maintenance. You already have most of the controls on an expensive to replace and hard to diagnose circuit board.

10 years ago when I replaced my 1970 60% one, the contractor convinced me I wouldn't save enough on on gas with a 90% over an 80% to pay for the increased maintenance. When I look at the problems here, it is mostly things like the control board, inducer blower, flame sensor, and limit switch which my 80% furnace has too. I see very few problems specific to the higher efficiency furnaces. Could be my contractor was looking at past problems that had been solved.

It is possible the blower motor is on its way out, drawing excessive current and burning up the relay on the board. It is also possible replacing the board jiggled something around and got it making better contact for a while.

If the blower won't run on manual, that bypasses the limit switches leaving the relay on the board and the motor itself as the most likely problems. Can you pull the plug to the blower motor off the board and jumper 120V to it? If it runs, the relay on the board could be bad again. Note, be careful not to jumper the 120V to yourself.