Saturday, January 2, 2010

Honey I "almost" blew up my boys!

I tried, but was unsuccessful. Maybe next time. Here is the story. First of all, if you are reading this blog, you probably know how cheap I am. I need a furnace for the cold days. First of all I need one this winter so I can work on the interior. I plumbed the system with propane and after I had the old furnace hooked up with gas and electric, I tried to fire it up. No luck. I could not get it to fire up. I then looked to the internet to give me some clues as to how to try and fix the furnace. Most people say to just scrap it and buy a new one. Since I don't expect to use the furnace very often I really dont want to spend much money to get it back in operation. I was told to pull the burner out and hacksaw the slots in the top open and that should fix my problem. I did just that, and put it back together and hooked it up. Guess what? It worked. It lit right up and I thought, "great I just saved myself $600" As you can see in the following picture you can see the blue flame. This is great! I decided to let the thing run for awhile so that it can get up to full tempeture. It shut off after about 5 minutes. I go over to the thermostat and shut it off and turn it back on. I then hear the furnace go "pop". I figure, that was interesting. I shut it off and do it again. I hear "POP". (that means a little louder) I do it again. "POP". The fourth time, it goes bang, and my ear start ringing. After I check myself for schrapnel, I decided not to try again. As you can see from the picture, the furnace blew out the sides of the burn chamber. I dedided at that point it was worth it to purchase a new furncace. I called Palamano RV in Florida and purchased a new one for around $350. If I knew that it was going to be around that price, I would not have hesitated and would have saved myself from death. I got the new one 2 days later and hooked it up. It works perfectly and now I have heat in the Airstream.

1 comment:

TomW said...

I just found your blog - Fun story on the furnace. The rest of your blog reminds me of when I refurbed my Overlander.

Keep up the great work,
Tom