My Rheem gas heating furnace in my attic has started to exhibit a problem. I came home to find it blowing cold air constantly. I opened up the furnace and found that one of the three round temperature sensors had quot;trippedquot;. They each have a tiny reset button on top of them. It was the top sensor that has it's face positioned downward, that had quot;trippedquot;. So I pushed the reset button and restarted the furnace. It worked for about an hour, then it tripped again and the furnace started blowing cold air. What happens is the burners shutoff when the sensor is tripped, but the fan stays on continuously. This continuous cold air mode apparently is quot;as designedquot; by Rheem and tells you that something is wrong. There are four burners inside my Rheem furnace. One of them seems to be spitting flames occassionally in the opposite direction of the normal gas/flame flow. Backdrafting I guess it the best word for it. What could be causing that? It must be what's tripping the sensor.
Furnaces are one thing that I don't think should be handled by the do-it-yourselfer. Please call a furnace repair company. It isn't worth losing your home or life over just to save a few bucks. M
if your filter is plugged the cold air is all that comes through cause it snuffs the heat out...
Few things could be causing the flame to pull back from the heat exchanger. Plugged filter isn't one of them. You should make sure your filters are clean but thats not the issue. It would help if I knew what kind of burners you had? Are they ribbon burners or cone? How old the furnace is? Is it laying on its side or standing upright? So there are a few things here that could be causing flame roll out. One the carry over on the burner that you see the flame rolling out is dirty. The end of the burner that connects to the pipe that comes from the gas valve comes out to a tee. all the burners should have this it makes them almost touch each other. There is a small groove in this tee that carries the flame from the burner with the pilot light or hot surface igniter over to the other burners. now if you take a small wire brush one that is as small as a toothbrush and clean that small groove it will allow the flame to travel faster across the burners. be very careful not to break the hot surface igniter if that is what you have. Another problem that I have seen before is a spiders nest in the jet that pushes the gas into the burner. This is hard to get out and usually takes an orifice bit to clean it. Another situation is that the section of heat exchanger that the burner is burning in has soot build up in it and is not letting the combusted gas vent out quick enough. your gas valve may not be opening completely when it is first engaged. It may also be that the limit that keeps on tripping is old and needs to be replaced. They dont last forever. Under any of these conditions I would still recommend that you call a tech to come out and look at it.
