Furnace may or may not turn on

Please bear with me as I do not know have a lot of knowledge on furnace's or know the technical words, but I will try my best.

Our gas furnace has been working fine for months and a couple weeks ago just stopped working.
My husband contacted the landlord and a tech came out and cleaned our furance.
Apparently it was pretty dirty.
It worked wonderful for a few hours that night.
The next day it would not come on.

I will turn off the thermostat and the coil will light and the flame most of the time ignites.
But the fan/blower does not come on.
And then it repeats a few times before shutting off completely.

Sometimes though everything functions correctly and the furnace will turn on for about a minute or two before shutting back off.
It may or may not start up again for a couple of minutes.

So for the weird part.
Our furnace is located in a closet in our living room and i have a small heater near the main vent and if that is on the furnace will turn on correctly and run until it reaches the temperature it's set for. O.O

Our landlord is saying that it's the circuit board but I just cannot understand how that can be if it will still function sometimes.
So she wants to charge us a huge chunk of money to replace something that i don't think is the cause.
I have searched all day online trying to find something and the closest thing i've come to our situation is that is could be the flame igniter.

Please help.

 

Welcome to the forums.


#1 Why are you paying anything to fix your landlords furnace ?
#2 What does the service tech say about replacing the board
If he hasn't been brought back..... why not ?

It could very well be an intermittent/defective control board but logical steps are taken first. The board isn't just replaced on a whim.

Every step the furnace makes MUST be noted.
1) thermostat calls for heat.
2) draft inducer motor starts
3) 30 seconds later the igniter starts heating
4) 25 seconds later the burner lights. At this point the burner should remain lit.
5) etc, etc, etc until the furnace fails.
This is an example of what we need to know and is something that I as a technician would watch for.

From your description we can't tell exactly what the failure problem is yet.


That tells me that you have a problem with the blower..... be it a defective motor, weak starting capacitor or problem on the control board.

 

Sorry, I am trying my best. Very stressed with today's events.

The landlord is convinced that we are to blame for the heater failing as there was a similar issue with it last year, in which, from what I understand to be the fan had to be replaced.
It is not confirmed that the circuit board is the problem, but apparently the landlord is being told so by the tech, whom will need to come back out to confirm. Another service visit which we are being told that we will have to pay.

That being besides the point...

The burner does not usually remain lit. It may come on for a second or so but then will go back off.
It seems there is a couple of attempts to get the burner to stay lit but then the furnace will turn off.

Again, I really have no knowledge about furnaces.

So if you want me to explain in laymans terms it is like this.
I set the thermostat 10 degrees above what the room temperature is displaying which triggers a motor in the furnace to start, because I can hear it.
Some seconds later ( i didn't count) the coil lights up and the burner ignites. IF it does stay lit I will wait for the fan to turn on but it hasn't when i'm watching it
IF it does turn on it will only stay on for a minute or two before shutting down.
The furnace may attempt the cycle again but it usually fails and will not attempt after the second time.

The point I was trying to make is that if there is outside heat hitting the vent, even potentially the thermostat from the outside the furnace will turn on and run fine. No problems whatsoever.

I do not know if that is a valid point, but I am trying to provide every detail that I know of.

So sometimes it works (very rarely) and some times it does not.

 

By outside heat hitting the vent.... I assume you mean a return vent to the furnace ?
Heat near the thermostat would cause it to read incorrectly. It would sense the house as warmer than it is. I can't see a relationship here with heat and your problem.

You need to remember..... we, or I, service based on sight and feel. I don't have the luxury of that here so I rely on you for that. I know it's not easy. I don't expect you to understand how the furnace works.

What I really don't understand is what game your landlord is playing here. How could you cause the blower fan to go bad. If he replaced it last year and it's bad again maybe he had a used one put in.

Your furnace board should have a blinking LED on it. It should be visible thru a sight glass in the blower door. Trying looking for it and see if you can get a service code for me.

A make and model of the furnace would also be helpful. The model number is on an ID plate on the side wall near the burner. The burner access door needs to be removed to see it.

 

No I mean that there is a separate heater, not connected to the furnace on the outside wall of the vent where the furnace pulls air in from.
EDIT: My husband tells me that the vent I am talking about is the induction fan.
So the separate heater is by the wall near the induction fan and when it is on the furnace works fine.

I understand and i appreciate your assistance. I am trying to figure out if my intuition is correct or we should just go with what our landlord is saying.
Not knowing what i'm talking about also makes it hard to have another technician come out and possibly find it in a good mood and working fine and have us back to square one.

So we're told that it's a weathermaker 8000. I have the model # of 383KAV024045.
Not sure if that is what you are looking for.

And there is no blinking LED as the board was replaced with a generic so it does not have anything to display.

We also did a self test and everything turned on fine.

So as I was checking it the safety feature triggered the furnace to turn on and now it is going through the cycle of turning on for a minute and shutting down.

 

I've been a landlord for thirty years, so I can say with some experience that your landlord is a fool.

Hold the landlord responsible for fixing the furnace. If he's being a jerk NOW, imagine how much of a jerk he will be if you try to fix the furnace and don't succeed in doing so.

I suppose he's going to want the March rent in a couple of days, right? I'd pay him when he gets the furnace repaired.

Alternatively, if he doesn't take action himself, most landlord tenant laws allow the tenant to have repairs made AND DEDUCT THE COST FROM YOUR RENT.

 

DBRG_27, I STRONGLY urge you to contact the local governmental office that deals with landlord-tenant issues and disputes BEFORE you withhold any rent money. This may be at the city or the county level in your area and they LOVE to clamp down on property owners such as you describe.

 

Honestly, this is a huge point. READ YOUR LEASE!! You may only be responsible for a specific dollar amount or not responsible for any repairs for the homes infrastructure. Heating, Air, Plumbing etc. This should be well documented in your lease. Do not touch anything until you have a very clear understanding of what your responsible for. It could really hurt you in the end.

 

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Yes, that's good advice.


Most landlord tenant laws require the owner to repair defects in the house or appliances, but checking to be sure is the smart move.

What is your city, county and state?