I have a very old house with two older gas forced air furnaces on separate programmable thermostats. One of the older units works perfectly, but the blower on the oldest one is sometimes reluctant to start. I know that these units are not fuel efficient but they are built of extremely heavy gauge metal and my HVAC service person tells me that they will never burn out. I have gone the high efficiency route at a previous house and the fuel savings was not substantial so therefore I would prefer to keep these units. Sometimes the blower on the problem unit will hum and click off and on before finally catching and running properly. I had a service person check the unit and it performed perfectly while he was there. A furnace blower and motor dealer suggested that I remove the blower housing and give the unit a good cleaning and lubrication. I did this and the problem is still there. Do you think that the blower motor could be defective? The thermostat and wiring are less than a year old.
Thank you!
Replies
Likely the motor is bad but you might take it to a motor shop. For a small fee they can check it out. It might just be a bad staring capacitor, start switch or crud may be partially shorting a winding. Either way they can give you the option of replacing the bad part, rewinding the motor (Often not as expensive as it sounds.) or getting a whole new unit.
There is a start switch operated by centrifical force inside the motor, my money is that it's causing the problem.
Edited 12/4/2002 11:53:54 PM ET by bake