My house has 2 zones (upstairs/downstairs). On Thanksgiving, the upstairs fan (I’m assuming) started making a horrible squeal when the system would kick on. At first it was some of the time, but by last night it was every time. Yesterday morning I called a recommended HVAC company and they are coming Monday morning. Up until this morning, the fan was still able to blow heat. I can hear the furnace clicking on but the fan is now dead.
Is it safe to just keep the system on, or should I turn it off until the tech comes Monday morning?
Hello,
I'm experiencing something strange with my heating setup—Nest Thermostat Gen3 with forced air gas furnace—and would really appreciate the help of the Nest/HVAC experts in this subreddit.
What I'm observing
When my Nest turns the heat on, the heat works properly for about an hour. Then, the heating stops and the gas furnace starts to make this sound: https://imgur.com/NS9PMcI. (I think this is short cycling, but I'm not an expert.)
This continues indefinitely, until I turn the Nest mode to "off", then turn it back to "heat". At this point, the heating works properly for about an hour, and then the cycle repeats.
Some information about my system
The furnace is from 1999. It's pretty old.
The furnace was working properly a couple weeks ago with a very old thermostat. I installed the Nest thermostat about a week ago, and am now experiencing this problem.
The wires I'm using are W, Rh, and G. In the previous very old thermostat, there was a jumper wire from Rh to Rc. Since my home doesn't have cooling, I didn't think it would be a problem if there were nothing into Rc for the Nest.
Here is a picture of the previous very old thermostat:
Previous setup with very old thermostat
Here are pictures of my Nest setup:
There's a very old humidifier attached to the furnace, but its dial has been turned to off for as long as I've owned the home.
Thanks in advance for any guidance!
Thanks for everyone who answered the other day. Since my old furnace is shot I’m getting quotes on new equipment. I’m intrigued by cold climate heat pumps that, as far as I’m told, will do both whole house heating and cooling. There are also big rebates for it which make it cheaper than doing a furnace and separate AC system. I’m in upstate NY and this Mitsubishi system is rated to -15F. It’s about 2-3k more than a 96% two-stage variable speed furnace (without AC).
As installers and technicians, what do you guys think? Will my utility costs be a lot better with the heat pump? Are cold climate heat pumps reliable enough technology now? I presently run two window units in the summer for cooling and am OK with that but they’re probably not very efficient.
Also, brands of furnaces being quoted are Amana, Rheem and Lennox. Any difference between them?
We moved into our house in July, and replacing the American Standard Freedom 78 furnace is on our list for next year — we’re in it for the winter with what we’ve got.
https://imgur.com/a/8b1jCcX
A couple questions:
-
When I replaced the filter, I had a hard time getting it out because it was compacted with a 2” layer of dust, dirt, and hair 🤢 Trying to verify the direction of airflow (I don’t trust the previous owners to have it installed it correctly), I’m pretty sure the filter was installed backwards. The ducts to the registers come out of the top, and there’s one giant duct that feeds into the side, which I assume is the intake. In the first picture, that would mean the airflow goes right to left. If that’s true, how would the dust end up on the “good” side of the backwards filter?
-
I have read some not great things about newer furnace reliability on this sub. It sounds like the classic mechanical vs. electronic set of tradeoffs — more that can go wrong, harder to diagnose issues, etc. Are we better off trying to extend the life of our furnace for as long as we can? One motivation for getting a new furnace would be peace of mind, but it sounds like that’s tenuous even with a new unit.
-
What happens if you have a huge octopus of ducts with a modern furnace? Aren’t they much smaller? Our house is not huge (~2000 square feet), but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the furnace ductwork. I think we have ten floor registers in the house, and they all connect directly to the furnace. Should I expect the HVAC installer to include reworking some of these in any estimates? I’m worried there won’t be enough surface area for all of them on a new unit.
Thanks for your help! Stay cozy, northern folks.
Because of inflation
Hi, I'm pretty stumped with this issue I've been having for the last several days. There are a lot of pieces to explain so I'm going to do my best, I'm out of ideas and not really sure what to try next or what professional to reach out to to take a look.
I have a gas water heater that's about 4 years old, a gas forced air furnace that is about 24 years old, both are in my basement and their flues connect together, they share a chimney with my wood burning fireplace on the first floor. This wood burning fireplace has an ash dump that collects in the basement wall, there are 2 clean out doors in my basement, one is on the right and closest to lining up with the ash dump opening in the fireplace, there is also a second door to the left that almost lines up with where the water heater and gas furnace flue enters the wall to eventually join the chimney with the wood burning fireplace flue.
Other potentially relevant details I replaced all the windows in the home, which presumably sealed up the envelope a bit (colonial single family house built in 1943), I also upgraded my bathroom exhaust vent fan to a unit that was significantly stronger than the unit it replaced (does 130 CFM, guessing the original was more like 50 CFM).
Before using the fireplace for the first time this season I noticed no wood ash smells in my home while using the furnace for heat for several months. After using the fireplace a few times I've noticed at times (when there isn't a fire and hasn't been for several days) a faint wood ash smell on the first floor of my house, I can't really smell it on the second floor and I can't smell it at all in the basement. Once I started to notice this smell it seemed like it could be exacerbated by using the bathroom fan for long periods of time (likely a negative pressure issue?).
Noticing this I figured maybe the smell was coming in through my wood fireplace chimney (although the flue is closed, it has glass doors, they're closed and the air intake for the fireplace is closed) so I cleaned up and pushed the majority of the ash in the fireplace into the ash dump. Ever since I did this the wood ash smell on the first floor became much stronger. I thoroughly cleaned the first floor, vacuumed, dusted, especially near the fireplace, and in my dining room where I was smelling the wood ash smell the strongest. It was at this point where I also started to detect where the smell seemed to originate from, surprisingly, it isn't the fireplace. It appears to
... keep reading on reddit ➡Damn inflation
Hello,
I installed my Nest Thermostat (3rd gen) on Christmas Day December 2020, and just received my January 2021 bill today. My January bill was more than double my December 2020 bill! Also, my bill was more than double my January 2020 bill. I checked the average weather for my area and January was only 8 degrees colder (20% colder) than December 2020, but my bill was 100% higher!
The only change was I swapped out my honeywell thermostat for the Nest Thermostat. I have my thermostat set to the same temperature my old one was set to. My house use a forced air gas heating system.
What am I doing wrong or is Nest doing something wrong?
Thank you.
With enough beans, training, and no pants, you can kinda fly like this (ass-down with constant farting). Don’t get too high, as you’re not invulnerable…
We are in Edmonton, Alberta, and experience winter about 4-5 months of the year. The temperature can drop as cold as -35°C, although the wintertime average is more around -15°C. Our 8900W residential rooftop solar power system is producing about 7500 kWh/yr. After we put our house on a crash power diet last year, our annual consumption is around 4000 kWh. The house was built in the mid 60s, it has a typical forced air gas fired furnace, that is reaching the age of replacement.
I would like to explore other options besides just a high-efficiency gas furnace. I am very interested in mini splits, or a replacement forced air furnace that is electric. It is my ultimate goal to completely eliminate our dependency on natural gas. Last year, we replaced our typical gas fired hot water tank, with a more modern one that is a hybrid heat pump/electric style. In the summertime it is consistently warm enough that we do not need our furnace at all for the months of June, July and August, and our gas consumption was 0.0 GJ, we still got about a $45 a month gas bill completely made up of administrative charges.
Our floating gas rate is very low, we pay on average, about $2.31/GJ. There is also a federal carbon tax. Over the last two years we have paid about $830 a year for gas, by tracking the bills I found that the actual gas only accounted for about 20% of those costs. Everyone I talk to about electric heating in Northern Canada complains about how power intensive it is. But if I take $830 at our current six cents per kilowatt hour rate, that gives me almost 14,000 kWh of electricity. Factor in our surplus production and the elimination of duplicate administrative charges, and it becomes more attractive.
I am looking for some advice from someone who utilizes either an electric furnace and or mini splits with some type of supplementary heating in a cold temperature zone such as Northern Alberta. I find the minisplits to be an exceptionally attractive option, but I recognize they are only efficient to about -28°C, so we would need a supplementary heating system when it is colder than that. Historically, it is colder than -28°C for about 15 days a year where we live.
Live in a 3 unit single-story apartment building. All furnaces and hot water heaters are in the basement. No access to the basement as its the workshop for the owner.
Installed the Nest E yesterday. The thermostat wiring has a red wire connected to R and a Yellow wire connected to W. I find that this yellow wire being connected to W is odd but just went with it as is.
After install of the Nest E, the furnce will short cycle (learned that new term today) indefinitly, the "on side legenthing from 5 secs evey cycle untill it "runs" for 60 secs and then starts over.
I have the temp set to 60 and its 73 in the apt and will be warmer the next week so no need for heat right now, so the furnace should not be cycling
Possible that the yellow wire in the W connecter needs to be moved to Y?
---
as I was writing this, I turned the heat up to 75 and the furnace ran a normal cycle till it got to 75 in the apt, on shutdown I no longer hear the cycling.
so confused
Hi all,
I've got a small apartment with central HVAC, which runs on a Rheem RCFA-HM2417AC unit. Last night, it started coming on for brief periods, then turning off, then coming on, etc - most of the time with no heat at all. At first, I thought it might be my Nest (white) thermostat, but I popped the old one (Robertshaw) on and it had the same issue.
I read a few articles, and followed some steps from this one. I connected the red and white wires, and it seemed to work fine (though I didn't hold it for as long as I should have. I'll try that in a bit.). Put the thermostat back on, and the problem was still there. Then, I went downstairs and cleaned off the flame sensor. The heat came on using the thermostat and lasted for a few minutes, leading to raised hopes...then it shut down again. Some notes:
- I'm lazy and cheap, and the unit hasn't been serviced since 2008. Totally on me.
- I haven't checked the flue yet, because I don't know where it is (I'm guessing it's on the side of the building, since I'm in a 1st floor apartment and my HVAC unit is in the basement along with the one from the other 1st floor apartment).
- I replaced the filter a few weeks ago.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Hopefully something can be done!
Hi Everyone,
Live in Southeastern PA and am embarking on a remodel... 4500 sq ft 1910s stone home stacked as 3 full floors. Have a few HVAC vendors pushing a heat pump system over conventional forced air. Old steam boiler/pipes and rads not savable and replacement not in the budget.
Basically two questions for anyone with experience:
- Heat pump performance in winters in a larger home (comfort, costs, etc) vs forced air
- Using spray foam insulation directly on interior stone walls.
Thanks!!!
I blame it on inflation.
This happened many years back.
Living in a developing country, we don't have have gas connections for our stoves, so have to rely on a pretty reliable network of gas agencies which supply cylinders. And this was long enough back when mobile phones did not exist/was not widely prevalent, so telephone directories were still a thing. For the uninitiated, telephone directories are books containing all the names and phone nos of the people living in the immediate vicinity.
Our local gas agency was on the directory and so was my home no. The problem was, the agencie's no and mine were switched, so, a person calling them after looking up the dir would call our home. And 14 year old me would have to explain the mix-up and give them the actual no. This carried on for months. I had called the agency and asked them to get the no corrected but to no avail.
Keep in mind this was a busy agency and my home phone would ring sometimes many times a day followed by me explaining. After a couple more months of this going on, I got fed up and decided to start "working" at the agency.
So, agency calls don't have much convo and go like this:
Customer: Hello, K-3478(customer no) Agency : Ok, will send. Delivery no 7634(works like an OTP)
Following are the actual(translated to English) conversations that happened in the months that followed:
Customer 1: Hello, L-5285 Me: Ok, your no is 8264
Customer 2: Hello M-8364 Me: Ok, your no is 1234, we will deliver today itself.
After a couple of months of me diligently doing this, the directory got corrected with their updated phone no.
I guess that's inflation for you.
Inflation.
Inflation.
