Anyone know about old furnaces?

[soloz2]

I am curious if the old furnace in my garage works. I decided to not worry about it last winter, but now that some other projects are underway I'm hoping it will work and I can just heat the garage when I want to work out there. It's an old Mor-Sun that appears to be from around 1950. I scheduled an inspection and tune up through the HVAC company I normally use, but they can't come look at it until January.


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[Falcon67]

Having had a similar early 70s gas/air handler model in our old house, your potential issues will be the thermocouple, gas control, whether the burner chamber is sound (put at least one CO detector near by) , where it pulls feed air and the firebox control thermostatic switch. The last item controls the blower start temp and serves as an overtemp shutoff. This is the part that allows the blower to run after the fire is shut down in order to use up residual heat in the firebox. The old thermo switches worked good and were pretty smooth and had a little delay in operation. The new replacements are damn finicky little bastages. If you are picking up cold feed air from the floor area, the new controls can actually start/stop the blower as firebox temperature rises and falls while the burners continue to fire. Annoying as hell in a house, maybe not so much in a shop.

Should work good if the gas controls are sound and the firebox is tight without any pinholes. When we updated the AC in around 2000 in that house, we kept the old air handler and gas heat. Still working AFAIK.

 

[jubilee]

I’m still running a 1958 100,000 btu Lennox. Has grease caps on motor and fan bearings I check/tighten couple times a season. Check drive belt and blowout/vacuum unit yearly. Never had a problem with flame ( nice blue color), but easy to adjust.
Had to replace pilot light thermocouple once and clean gas valve once or twice in the 50 years I’ve ran it. If it won’t light, tap gas valve lightly with hammer/something, if it lights, gas valve sticking and needs cleaned. Very easy to do.
Condition of drive belt very important obviously.
Run a quality carbon monoxide detector.

 

[fitter30]

Oil motor, blower can also pull the burners and pilot blow them out. Usual place for the heat exchanger to crack is right above the burner openings on the inside need a mirror and flashlite to inspect.

 

[crugg65]

Holes or cracks in the heat exchanger is why most furnaces are scraped. If you can’t see any than cycle your furnace by turning up your thermostat. Observe the burners and a nice blue flame is our goal; yellow flame means that burners should be removed and cleaned/wire brushed. Cast iron burners last almost forever and the stamped steel ones rust out, corrode and distort and might need replacing. Now back to the operation; the flame is on so watch and observe the fire. Wait for the blower to turn on and watch the tone of the flame. If the flame starts to wave or dance the moment the blower starts, then there can be a hole or crack in metal heat exchanger! This can lead to the flame to burn poorly and most times your furnace can make carbon monoxide (CO). A google search can educate you on the ill effects of CO poisoning! Hopefully your furnace man will have a CO detector/meter to measure the amount or carbon monoxide in your furnace flue gases. More complications can occur with a chimney that doesn’t draw out the flue gassed or is blocked! Just a basic low down of the “bad” of having a warm air furnace and what to look for. Little long winded but I hope it helps.


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