darkoshi

Sometimes it takes me an hour of not being able to fall asleep, to realize it's because I'm feeling cold. In spite of the thick blankets, fleece sheets, and the electric blanket at my feet.

Now I got out of bed for a while and turned the heater up.

Yesterday morning, the heater wasn't working. Only the night before, I'd been reading and replying about someone else's thermostat problem. My problem wasn't due to the thermostat, though. The furnace was getting power and making the buzzy noise that meant it was starting up, but then would stop before the hot air started blowing.

I called the person who replaced the heater's control board 3 years ago when it last had a problem. His voicemail said he was unavailable til tomorrow, but forwarded me to someone else. Of all luck, they happened to be nearby getting supplies for another job, and were able to stop by in under an hour and easily fix it. Based on what I saw them do and what they told me, and what I looked up afterwards, there was some small debris that they cleared out from a tube, which had been causing the pressure switch not to close

The pressure switch is a safety mechanism that prevents the gas from being turned on and the flame from getting lit when the airflow isn't normal.

http://www.grayfurnaceman.com/gas-furnace-pressure-switch-problems.html

From looking at the documentation that came with the control board, its LEDs were actually flashing the error code for "Pressure Switch Open". I didn't realize it was an error code, because the flashing was steady, rather than a certain number of flashes followed by a pause. If there's ever a problem again, I need to remember to check those LEDs as one of the first troubleshooting steps.

Revisited the crawlspaces today.

At my mom's house, I removed the electronic air cleaner front panel. The prior owners did get rid of the cells; the inside was empty except for a thin disposable filter. It was very dirty (reasonably so as my mom hadn't replaced it since moving into the house). My mom had bought a new one, so I replaced the dirty one with the clean one. With the front panel off, I could see into the return ducts. One of them appears to have insulation on the *inside*. It looked very dirty.

I removed the snake skin by the HVAC system, and found another snake skin by the exterior wall. It was next to an opening through which cables connect to the outside A/C unit and phone box. So that is likely where the snake(s) got in. My mom will close it off.

At the other house, I went down below to take another look at the humidifier I saw last week. I found the label with the model #, but no humidistat and no obvious way to power it off. I tried to turn off the water valve to it (because of the mold, we want to reduce the humidity in the house, not increase it), but then the valve started dripping, so I put a bucket underneath for now.

Maybe the house's mold problems is caused by the humidifier putting too much moisture in the air. Today with the heater on, the house smelled quite unpleasant to me again. Of course, now I'm envisioning a dirty moldy humidifier that may not have been cleaned out in ages, blowing mildewy air into the house, even though I have no proof yet that the unit is dirty inside.

Then I picked up pinecones and branches from the yard - last week was very windy.

Then I put up a pet gate in the house to keep the dogs away from the bedrooms. I'm unsatisfied with the gate though. It has 2 design flaws compared to the one at my house. The bottom catch doesn't work right (other people have mentioned the same problem in their reviews), and the whole gate occasionally lifts out of the hinges. Unfortunately the better model was discontinued and is no longer available. Now I'm considering getting a different brand instead, but that can wait. Maybe I'll get used to this one, or find a way of fixing the flaws.

.

I also voted in the democratic primary today. I'm disappointed that Hillary won over Bernie, and by such a large margin. But I'd much rather have Hillary win than Trump or the other Republican candidates.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/647339.html

Last weekend I mucked about in 2 crawlspaces.

At the new house, one of the ducts had been loose and leaking out hot air (hopefully the reason for the high gas usage last month). An HVAC technician fixed it, but I wanted to look around to make sure there was nothing else obviously wrong-looking down there, and to get photos of everything.

I explored a part of the crawlspace with my high-intensity flashlight, headlamp, and camera. But a big low-hanging duct blocked my way to the other half of the crawlspace.

I wondered how the HVAC guy had managed it. Surely if a small person like me couldn't get through, even slithering on my belly... I suddenly wondered if there was another entrance into the crawlspace. There were no other entrances around the outside of the house. But in the garage closet, I found an access hatch. Bingo! Qiao knew about it, but I hadn't thought of asking him before-hand.

So I went in that way, found the duct that the HVAC guy had repaired, and took a bunch more photos.

Then my mom told me that she had been in her crawlspace unsuccessfully trying to find out where one replaces the filters. Since I was full of dirt from the other crawlspace anyway, I offered to take a look. The headroom in her crawlspace is somewhat better than at the other house. It turns out her system has an electronic air filter which has been turned off since she got the house. I'll have to go back to check what is inside the unit; when I was down there, I didn't realize that the front panel can be pulled off. It's possible the original cells may have been removed and replaced with a disposable filter - that may be why the switch was turned off.

There was a surprise in my mom's crawlspace: a long long long snake skin winding around the HVAC system. A snake must have shed its skin. Or maybe multiple snakes. Or maybe one snake multiple times. It was so long that I hope it wasn't a single shedding from a single snake.

Now I know to watch out for snakes when crawling around in crawlspaces.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/646929.html

Oh dear. The weather forecast is for a high of 103 today, and the lowest high thru next Thursday being 98. Yesterday it was 100, the day before 98.

I'm thinking of replacing my HVAC system. I'd rather do it under careful planning now, rather than waiting for it to break. A few years back when I tried to have it serviced, they refused to touch it. I was told that it might last some more years, but in the current condition it could stop working at any time and they didn't want me to think that it was because of something they did.

I want to replace the ducts too, as the air that blows into the house always smells sort of like basement dust.

I'd really like to get a zoned system so that we could set certain rooms to be warmer or cooler than the others. Simply having an on/off switch for each room would be good enough for me (I don't care that much about air leakage between the rooms; just don't want cold air blowing straight out at me when I'm already cold), but it sounds like they aren't made that way.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/614036.html

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Entries tagged with hvac

heater pressure switch

and pinecones

dirt ducts snakes

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