$760 Circuit Board or new system ?

[Zyp]

HVAC Gay Guy is dangerous to the viewing public. Someone's going to take his ghetto advice and get hurt.

[gghh]

As you can see this group is not actually a legit help group. Rather it is just a bunch of self important rejects that hang here to perform their version of an online circle jerk.

$760 for the board is to much. Start looking for the board yourself or start searching for a competent electronics tech to see if he can find a flaw in the board.

If you get the board install it yourself and report it back here. Make sure you let the HVAC professionals know that repairing a furnace doesn't take a professional. That should go over well.

[scott21230]

That's why I turn mine off around March or April and turn it back on in November.

[Mike H]

...

Jim,

If you are handy at all, you may be able to fix this yourself. Basically all you need is the circuit board, though you may also need a new blower motor. The circuit board usually has a motor controller on it, and depending on the design, as the bearings start to fail in the motor, the motor will have to draw more and more current to keep running. Eventually this can burn out the controller if the controller isn't well designed.

I had this happen to me on the new years eve day last year. Had to have someone come out on new years day. Took so long that by the time they showed up I had the fan motor out and noticed it was almost completely froze up. The tech immediately wanted to just bag it all and replace the whole furnace. I had to press him to see if he had a generic motor that could be fit in there to try. He said he did, but it was going to be $380 for the motor. Now I've purchased industrial motors before, and new I could probably get something that would work out of Grainger, but they wouldn't be open till Monday, so I had him do it.

After he had it all wired up, that's when we found the controller board bad. Told me that was it, a controller board would cost 1/3 the cost of a whole new furnace... so he claimed. I had him take his motor, and he set me up to talk to a salesperson.

In the meantime, I started searching google using the part number on the controller that was bad. (they relay traces had melt on the back of the board). As luck would have it, I found a guy selling one on Craigslist in my area, he had just put it up for sale the day before. Apparently he had bought it for $250 to replace a bad controller in his furnace, but then that wasn't the problem, so he had it on a shelf. I bought it from him for $25. Then I found a HVAC guy that was on call. I asked him if he had a generic motor that would work on his truck. He said he did, and I offered to come pick it up. $100 for the motor.

3 hours later I had my furnace running again.

New controllers are gonna be expensive, simply because they are not all that common. But if you can find one, it can be worth it to just replace it and see how much longer you can go. A new furnace is awful expensive thing to do when everything else is working perfectly fine.

[Bubba]

Mike, Thats a nice story. All you've proven is that with enough time, money and enginuity, you can screw up a good furnace and make it work the way it wasnt designed to. All you've shown us is that you know how to bastardize a furnace. "Given enough thrust, even a tank can fly" Bubba

[CJT]

How so? From his description, it's working as designed.

[Stormin Mormon]

That tiny bit of heat helps keep away moisture. Helps keep your furnace from rusting out prematurely.

[Bubba]

hehehe. You dumbass Stormy. Who told you that? Your local gas company? What keeps the moisture out of the new furnaces with no pilot? What keeps them from rusting out? You are about the dumbest bonehead Ive ever heard from. Go borrow a rock. Bubba

[Mike H]

Bubba,

I don't believe I provided enough information for you to come to that conclusion.

[Noon-Air]

You have provided more than enough information.

We know your type... we get calls all the time at all hours..."My furnace is broken, whats wrong with it so I can fix it myself and not have to pay a licensed, insured, professionally trained, HVAC technician that will warranty his/her work. I have already gotten 4 calls this morning just like that. I will not diagnose over the phone, or the internet. Most of the callers tell me their furnace has been broke for days, or weeks... even had one tell me its been broke since last year!! and they all expect me to drop everything and come running because they now think its an "emergency". Then when I tell them that I can come out today but overtime charges apply, all of the sudden its not quite so important anymore, nor do they want to get put on the list for Tuesday or Wednesday. Its "I'll call back on Wednesday" without thinking that I am already booked up and they will just have to wait longer.

You on the other hand call a tech out, he replaces a bad motor, then also needs to get the board replaced... you then have him take the motor back out, and go get one yourself along with the board.... is the tech supposed to re-box that motor that he installed and sell it to somebody else?? its now a *USED* motor, and most probably has had the wires cut to fit *YOUR* furnace.

I suppose you then bitched because he had the audacity to charge you for the service call?? What about his time for installing then uninstalling the motor?? Now you wonder why HOs get the crap that they do when they come in here....Gee, I wonder. And you have the balls to call us rip-offs.

[Bubba]

Silly you. You dont know what you provided. I could figure you out with my eyes closed. On top of that, Im part owner of the crystal ball that floats around in here. Do you need more? Bubba

[Mike H]

I just reply to you so folks can see what someone without guts to stand behind their posts for more than 8 days is like, Mr. x-archive...

[Mike H]

And I love the type of techs like you, because I see them all the time. Got a chip on your shoulder that anyone might try to fix their own furnace. And you jump to all sorts of conclusions. Of course the customer is a complete dick, because they are always too stupid to get out of their own way, but slightly dangerous because they are always in your way. No where did I call all of you rip-offs, nor even one of you. Me thinks you doth protest too much.

For your edification:

I paid a trip charge and an emergency service charge. I also paid for an hour to diagnose which included the time to install the motor and take it back out. I didn't see anything wrong with the charges from the tech and didn't even try to talk him down or anything. He did the work that I asked for, so I paid for it.

The only question I had with the tech was the price of the universal motor and the somewhat hard sell on a new furnace. I don't know that it's that big of a deal as that obviously was the tool that he had to use. If you don't have any parts for old furnaces, and you have new furnaces, well then if you're gonna solve a customer's problem, I guess you're gonna have to sell them a new furnace.

The tech validly assumed the motor was bad, since when you tried to turn the squirrel cage for the fan, the motor barely would move. The tech, on seeing this (I paged him at 10pm Friday, was called back at 8am Saturday Morning, he arrived at 10am) about the motor immediately tried to sell me a new furnace. I asked if he had a generic or universal motor that he could fit. He said he did, but it would cost $380 plus labor of about 1 hr.

Now I have worked in purchasing for a industrial manufacturing plant in the past. I know how much electric motors cost, I know that the motor in my furnace, doesn't cost $380, and even if you mark it up a good amount, that's way above list price (and this company I called doesn't pay list for their parts) In fact since I had it apart, I knew what the motor cost really was as I had looked it up on Grainger to start with, and such a motor varied from $75 to $150 depending on the manufacturer. So when he threw out $380 the red flag went up.

Well, regardless, I felt I needed heat, it was 46F in the home and getting colder (Outside Air Temp, 10 degrees F), what could I do. I told him to do the motor, as the best they could do, even if I purchased a furnace, would be install Monday, 48 hours away.

So he installed, and it didn't work. Call for heat, motor would jump, then control board would let out a big spark. He looked at the board, found a relay shorting out. Board bad.

So then he said there is nothing more they can do. Did I want a salesguy to call? I said I guess so, what other option do I have? He said he didn't have a control board, didn't know if he could get one, and even if he did it would probably $800. Did I really want to throw over $1100 into this furnace? (A valid question)

He asked if I wanted to keep the motor. I asked him if there was any point to keep it? He said no. (and what exactly will keep him from using again? It never ran?... he left all the wires long just to test it) So I said he might as well keep it.

After he left I sat and thought through the problem. It looked like regardless of what I do, I'm gonna need to heat the house now. Then I remembered, and went to a rental place and rented 6 electric space heaters. That would get me through the weekend. After getting the heaters, I got a call from the salesman. He could come over Monday afternoon and give me a quote. I told him I'd call him back.

I then pulled the controller board on the furnace to see if there was a component I could just de-solder and replace. Turned out the trace to the relay that was failing was also melted. I could solder on a jumper wire, and replace the relay to bypass the bad trace, but that didn't seem like a good idea. I found a part number on the board, so I went to google and started searching. I found various repair websites geared towards helping the repair tech. A couple of them advertised a different control board as a retrofit for the one I had. The different number apparently was a revised board designed to trip a circuit breaker if motor load gets to high. So I punched this new number in and found a craigslist posting by someone locally selling just such a board.

I got lucky. I then called a different HVAC company, I have a friend that is a Plumber, and he had an HVAC friend and gave me his phone number. I told him I was looking for a motor, and he said he had one on his truck. I met him at his house on my way back from picking up the controller. Got home, 1 hour later the furnace was back together and running.

The whole point of my initial post here was to let the OP know that there are options on there, long shot options, but certainly options. Perhaps there are some folks in the HVAC business that would rather see customer options to be as limited as possible?

[Bubba]

Ohhhh, Puhlezzzzzzzza! If it'll make you happy, I'll make a copy of it, frame it and send it to you as a Christmas present. Now, Bite me! and its "MR BUBBA" to you. Bubba

[HVAC Guy]

(stuff)

What I don't understand, Mike, is why you didn't go out to an electrical or farm hardware store (TSC?) and buy a new $100 120V electric 1/3 or 1/4 hp motor and wire it up to a jury-rigged standard light switch (or plug it directly into a nearby recepticle) so you could manually power your furnace fan and get heat while you figured out the problem with your $100 fan control circuit board.

Why? I would do exactly that (fix the trace) and see if the relay or the wire blows again. You're already going to chuck the board, so there's no harm. Especially if you already had rigged power to a new fan motor as described above as a backup plan.

What's so special about the motor?

Is it different than an ordinary 1/4 or 1/3 HP 1200 to 1550 rpm motor? Is it a DC motor? Is it variable speed?

Hey, I'm not knocking your desire to fix it yourself, but I would have done things a little differently.

Like chucking the controller board and installing a Honeywell L4064B Fan/limit controller to run a new $100 motor.

That is certainly the case.

As far as marking up the motor, that's standard for most residential contractors.

Roofers will almost double the price for shingles, and most roofers won't install shingles that you've paid for and arranged to have delivered to your roof.

[-zero]

.

And that has nothing to do with running your own business. Your job was to shop the best price with regards to urgency. Hang a carrot in front of a mule/vendor if necessary in order to do your job effectively.

Do you think for one moment, the manufacturing plant you worked for, didn't charge as much as the market would bear for their goods?

That's life.

-zero

[Mike H]

On Nov 26, 7:27 pm, HVAC Guy wrote: ...

Natural Gas Furnace with safety control systems built into the control board. This is a pilot-less furnace.

The board had a coating on it that I would need to strip off to solder a wire to the trace, Then I'd need to find a relay to replace the bad one. The relay had a clear case which I removed. The contact assembly in the relay was burned away such that it was barely completing a circuit any more. I was tired and to be honest, I was not exactly able to consider all my options.

...

It was a two speed motor, that's about the only thing special about it. An HVAC company was the only place I could think of to get a blower fan motor the proper housing size to fit the motor holder in my furnace on a Saturday. A farm store never came to mind, but now that you mention it, I likely could have found a replacement that would work at Fleet Farm.

I looked for generic Furnace controllers.. didn't find any, specifically for a Natural Gas Furnace.

Don't get me started on Roofing companies. With hail hitting around our area pretty much once a year for the past 4 years, we get the contractors that swoop in and want to check your roof for you. The cost to replace the roof always seems to add up to exactly what the insurance company will pay. No more, no less.

[Mike H]

I'm not trying to say that the free market system shouldn't work. It seems that some people are taking offense at the fact that someone might try to do something to avoid paying a surcharge for something simply because their back is against the wall. There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone charging $380 for a $150 electric motor. But then I don't need buy it from them, and I can make a note that I'm not going to work with them in the future. Not really life, but it is the free market at work, a benefit of living in the U.S.A.

[Noon-Air]

Its not Grand dads furnace anymore.

Consider the time to clean the board, and make repairs, then having the specific parts to do so.... its easier and cheaper to replace the board.

Depending on the furnace, it could be 850rpm, or 1075rpm, or 1100rpm. It could be a PSC motor, or DC with a control module(ECM). It could be anywhere from 1/8hp to 1hp.....but then I am only a tech, what do I know.

You can have the "proper size housing", but is it correct HP, RPM, direction of rotation, and current draw for the application??

Thats because they are specific to make/model/serial number.

No, they won't because of liability and warranty issues, same as HVAC contractors.

Maybe you should be looking at local roofing companies instead of the fly-by-nights.

[Mike H]

It was a 1/2hp motor, but beyond that I don't recall. I had written down all of the information off the old motor. It did not have a capacitor, which the new motor required. The housing of the old motor was heat damaged, but I was able to get a model number off of it, and a few numbers. Then from the model number I could find the specs online.

It was correct only in that it was a direct replacement per the specs on the old motor. Now that doesn't exactly mean the old motor was correct, but chances were likely as the motor appeared to be as old as the furnace. The house was built in 1986, and this was likely the original furnace.