Why oh why

[Staraglimmer]

Why, oh why is my furnace blowing cold air? It is set on 70, and it is 56 :( It's cold!!!

[maestramommy]

Does your whole system have a fan handler? And is it on? We have one. Theoretically it is supposed to make the temp in your house homogeneous by blowing continuously at a very low speed when the furnace isn't kicked in. Then when the furnace kicks in, it starts blowing at a much higher speed. The trouble is, it does the same for your A/C. There is a temp range for it to blow just very lightly, and that range is narrow. So if for some reason the temp. by the fan handler got too low it would think the A/C was kicking in and start blowing on high. We've had this happen a couple of times when it got really cold at night, and we had to just turn off the fan handler manually. Usually it does it's job, but it's not idiot-proof.

[elliput]

Is the pilot light on. You may need to relight it if it has blown out. There should be directions on your furnace of how to do this.

If not the pilot light, your thermostat may be malfunctioning. This would happen at my house in MI several times a month during the winter. I was able to re-set it by turning the thermostat off, letting it sit for a few minutes and then turning it back on. You may want to look into replacing the thermostat with a new one. If you don't already have a programmable model, I would suggest getting one- inexpensive models run about $40 and can save you that much in a couple of month if set properly.

Also, it could be a sensor in the furnace. You would need to have an HVAC guy check this one out for you.

[JenChem]

Check your gas supply, if you have anything else in your house that runs on gas, try to use it then call the company if it doesn't work. Keep in mind that there may be enough gas in the lines to start up an oven burner but leave it on for a few minutes to make sure you are getting an actual supply.

We lost gas twice, both times I contacted the gas company, after hours, and they sent out an emergency crew to restart it. The second time, they fixed a frozen part on our regulator then sent the crew back the next day to install a new one.

If that doesn't work, try to figure out how to relight your pilot light. If you can't, write down the brand of your furnace and check with Sears (they will come out and service select appliances for a fee, even if you didn't buy from them originally.

[LD92599]

Also check the ignitor. Ours doesn't have a pilot light and was not working earlier this week. It was the ignition switch that needed to be replaced!

[Lolabee]

Is the pilot light on. You may need to relight it if it has blown out. There should be directions on your furnace of how to do this.

Also, it could be a sensor in the furnace. You would need to have an HVAC guy check this one out for you.

My furnace (brand new, btw) started doing this a few weeks ago when we had subzero temps outside, and when I opened up the furnace panel I found that the fire had somehow been extinguished. If you have an older furnace with a real pilot light, it's probably gone out and you need to relight it. That should do the trick and get things running again.

If you have a newer furnace like mine (newer models don't have pilot lights,) the first thing you need to do is turn the furnace off at the main switch that should be on the side of the furnace itself. I was able to get it to fire back up by turning it on and off several times at that main switch. I also called the contractor who installed the furnace a few months ago and insisted he come right over to fix it. It turned out that the main controls for the furnace were defective and needed to be replaced. Finally, we replaced the filter because the HVAC guy suspected that the dirty one we had at the time may have been triggering the defective controls to power the furnace down to prevent it from damaging the furnace.

I would definitely recommend that you also call an HVAC person out right away to look at the situation and get a permanent fix done to make sure it doesn't keep turning off like that.

Hope that helps, and good luck!

[DrSally]

THat happened to us when the blower was working, but the furnace wasn't. If it continues get it checked quick!

[Staraglimmer]

Yay! As of today we have heat again. It took until today for someone to be able to get to our house because of all the stupid snow! It was 41 degrees inside with space heaters! It was icky! thanks for your help we tried everything! We needed a new part. I am so happy to have heat again! ...and so is DD!:applause:

[DrSally]

Yeah! I've been stuck for as much as 12 hours wo/heat in the winter with a newborn and DH out of town, so I know what it's like. In New England the power lines seemed to go out all the time.