Stan in Oly, WA
Well-known Member
A few days ago I posted a question about the recent inspection of my natural gas furnace. I got a lot of very good information about it, for which, thank you very much. The fundamental question, of course, is one which it is not possible to answer: When is the heat exchanger going to fail?
Yesterday I was finally able to speak with the tech who did the inspection. I don't think he said anything which wasn't true, but he also didn't say anything which wasn't part of a sales pitch. Now, all I really know for sure is that I have a furnace which is more than 20 years old, and the heat exchanger could fail. That does me about as much good as knowing that I could be in a car accident someday.
Here are my two new questions: Are catastrophic heat exchanger failures which cause fires common events? I know that some here will say that even if the odds are only one in a million, I owe it to my family to stop using the furnace immediately. But if we never did anything that had one in a million chance of resulting in an accident, we'd never drive a vehicle, climb a ladder, etc. So I'd like to know the answer and use the information to make my own decision.
The other question is, how easy is it to view the heat exchanger? I took the front panels off the furnace this morning and it appeared to me that you would have to remove a major component with lots of wire and hose or pipe connections to get a look at the heat exchanger. Not that a furnace tech couldn't do this, of course, but it looked to me like it would be moderately complicated and time consuming.
Thanks,
Stan
Yesterday I was finally able to speak with the tech who did the inspection. I don't think he said anything which wasn't true, but he also didn't say anything which wasn't part of a sales pitch. Now, all I really know for sure is that I have a furnace which is more than 20 years old, and the heat exchanger could fail. That does me about as much good as knowing that I could be in a car accident someday.
Here are my two new questions: Are catastrophic heat exchanger failures which cause fires common events? I know that some here will say that even if the odds are only one in a million, I owe it to my family to stop using the furnace immediately. But if we never did anything that had one in a million chance of resulting in an accident, we'd never drive a vehicle, climb a ladder, etc. So I'd like to know the answer and use the information to make my own decision.
The other question is, how easy is it to view the heat exchanger? I took the front panels off the furnace this morning and it appeared to me that you would have to remove a major component with lots of wire and hose or pipe connections to get a look at the heat exchanger. Not that a furnace tech couldn't do this, of course, but it looked to me like it would be moderately complicated and time consuming.
Thanks,
Stan