Hi,
I'll try and keep this brief unless someone requests more information. I moved in to a house that has an apparently 2004 Gibson High Efficiency (92+?) direct vent furnace that started acting up 2 months in to the cold MN winter. The issue it was having is it'd go through its sequence, heat up the ignition element, seem like the gas valve would open and 3 seconds later would close, the ignition element would stop glowing and the furnace would try again. Eventually it would fire and work fine.
1. Now there was a PVC pipe next to the furnace bringing in the fresh air, but it wasn't connected directly to the furnace's provided opening right in to the hot box. I hooked it up-- that seemed to help (firing became more predictable)
2. THE MAIN QUESTION. After the tech left (who took the money but lacked the skill... more on that if you're interested
) I started looking around and noticed this. There are 3 1/4" vacuum tubes that hook up to the pressure switch. There's 3 of those hoses (1 pressure switch). One hose hooks up to the fire box where the burners are (probably pulls vacuum there), one that hooks up to what the install manual calls the "header box" not sure what that is. The 3rd one, I noticed, was tucked behind the pressure switch simply sucking atmosphere vacuum. I tinker with cars a bit-- there you don't want the vacuum line to be just hanging not connected. So, I plugged up that line.
Furnace seems to be working fine for 2 days now. So I wonder, is there any scenario where that would be a correct install to have the vacuum line sucking unplugged, or did someone mess up? I think my main issue was probably resolved more by bringing in the fresh air directly, but who knows. BTW, there wasn't any codes on the board.
Thanks for your help!
Julian
I'll try and keep this brief unless someone requests more information. I moved in to a house that has an apparently 2004 Gibson High Efficiency (92+?) direct vent furnace that started acting up 2 months in to the cold MN winter. The issue it was having is it'd go through its sequence, heat up the ignition element, seem like the gas valve would open and 3 seconds later would close, the ignition element would stop glowing and the furnace would try again. Eventually it would fire and work fine.
1. Now there was a PVC pipe next to the furnace bringing in the fresh air, but it wasn't connected directly to the furnace's provided opening right in to the hot box. I hooked it up-- that seemed to help (firing became more predictable)
2. THE MAIN QUESTION. After the tech left (who took the money but lacked the skill... more on that if you're interested
Furnace seems to be working fine for 2 days now. So I wonder, is there any scenario where that would be a correct install to have the vacuum line sucking unplugged, or did someone mess up? I think my main issue was probably resolved more by bringing in the fresh air directly, but who knows. BTW, there wasn't any codes on the board.
Thanks for your help!
Julian