Should burners and blower be removed ??
How come some only vacuum and dont remove anything. What is the standard??
Usually you don't have to remove burners on newer style furnaces and you can just run a cleaning brush through them.
I always removed the blower and washed the wheel in the laundry tub otherwise it would only take 20 minutes to do a furnace maintenance. If you run your fingers along the blades and it's not dirty then I wouldn't bother doing this but it is a good way to inspect the underside of the secondary heat exchanger.
If u run a brush through . Where does all the soot go ??
I have never seen any large amounts of soot on a natural gas furnace. The next time the burners fire it would just blow out any dust. Or it would just fall below where you could suck it up with a vacuum. I've never had a problem cleaning the burners in place. You just have to make sure you don't break the HSI. On the older furnaces like the Lennox G8 with those long thick burners I would remove those and use a steel brish to clean them and knock out all the debris inside.
If you have soot there's likely another problem like flame impingment due to an overfired condition or possibly a plugged secondary.
The vacuum is just for show. To do proper maintenance, blower should be pulled. Burners I only pull If I think they really need it otherwise they can usually be cleaned in place.
Most boilers and older furnaces I pull burners on.
I almost never pull a blower. That can add quite a bit of extra time which almost no company prices into a maintenance. It's always billed as an extra when needed and really isn't needed often.
When I worked for the bigger box company's back in the day the blower would be pulled every other year. If the blower isn't pulled in my opinion than it's not a proper cleaning. Tenletters is right... if u think u can pay $40 or $50 for a cleaning and expect the blower to be pulled, you are sadly mistaken! Don't get me wrong... I've done the "look/sound busy" vacuum trick many many times in the past lol
I guess u guys that dont pull the blower arent checking the heat exchanger
I'm going to admit, I've never cleaned the secondary heat exchangers during basic maintenances. What is the effect of cleaning it? Improving the airflow and heat distribution to the passing air? It wont be affecting the combustion in any actual way.
I used to have my furnace serviced every year just before heating season. The company's standard routine was to clean the furnace with a very loud Shop Vac, and then cycle the furnace a few times to make sure everything worked. Not once did they inspect the heat exchanger. Instead, they used a soft paint brush to simply brush off the A/C coils.
One year, I noticed a significant loss of air flow. My friend, who is a licensed gas worker at a local factory, told me to check the heat exchanger to make sure there was adequate air flow. This made perfect sense because the furnace room was right beside my woodworking shop. I checked it myself and sure enough, there was a HUGE amount of dust on the heat exchanger. It was a Heil furnace (piece of crap). Fortunately, I was able to remove the heat exchanger and clean it up with compressed air. It made a difference of day and night in the air flow.
Hence, any service call for routine maintenance must include a heat exchanger inspection, IMHO!!
Quote from: wantboost on February 04, 2019, 10:04:02 PM
I guess u guys that dont pull the blower arent checking the heat exchanger
Uhh no. Who pulls a blower to check a secondary on maintenance? That's insane. It's a waste of everyone's money.
I do a combustion test, camera the first pass of the primary and that's it (for heat exchanger testing). That's already more than most.
Look down the sides of the blower housing. If it's leaking, you'll see it without pulling the blower.
If you're just talking about checking for cleaning, you base that off the blower wheel and quote a cleaning cost.
Quote from: Lee Batchelor on February 05, 2019, 05:33:22 PM
I used to have my furnace serviced every year just before heating season. The company's standard routine was to clean the furnace with a very loud Shop Vac, and then cycle the furnace a few times to make sure everything worked. Not once did they inspect the heat exchanger. Instead, they used a soft paint brush to simply brush off the A/C coils.
One year, I noticed a significant loss of air flow. My friend, who is a licensed gas worker at a local factory, told me to check the heat exchanger to make sure there was adequate air flow. This made perfect sense because the furnace room was right beside my woodworking shop. I checked it myself and sure enough, there was a HUGE amount of dust on the heat exchanger. It was a Heil furnace (piece of crap). Fortunately, I was able to remove the heat exchanger and clean it up with compressed air. It made a difference of day and night in the air flow.
Hence, any service call for routine maintenance must include a heat exchanger inspection, IMHO!!
Did you seriously uninstall the heat exchanger, cleaned it, and then reinstalled it? How long did this take you?
Quote from: Sergroum on February 05, 2019, 11:41:08 AM
I'm going to admit, I've never cleaned the secondary heat exchangers during basic maintenances. What is the effect of cleaning it? Improving the airflow and heat distribution to the passing air? It wont be affecting the combustion in any actual way.
Ever look at an A-coil and need to clean the underside due to dust or dog/cat hair? Same thing with a secondary heat exchanger.
QuoteDid you seriously uninstall the heat exchanger, cleaned it, and then reinstalled it? How long did this take you?
Probably 2 or 3 hours, start to finish. It was remarkably quite accessible. The rear connection point was the trickiest.