Rheem RGPR 80% furnace, is whistling a standard feature?

[hrbngr]

hello,

First time poster here, I have used this forum to research various new furnace options after a tech stated that my 20yr old Carrier furnace had a bad heat exchanger. I settled on a Rheem RGPR 75k btu unit w/80% efficiency. So, the first night after the furnace was installed, it seemed to be working well but...it whistles. It whistles on low speed when it first turns on, then the whistle gets louder when it goes to medium speed or possibly high speed.

Could anyone give me advice on what to look for to see if I can get this to stop? Or offer a reasonable guess as to why this might be happening so that my install contractor doesnt blow me off when I call him back?

I could swear it didnt whistle when it the contractor first turned it on, but I was working on about 2 hours of sleep and I just might have not heard it. When my SO got home, she immediately called it to my attention, and ofc, now I can hear it quite clearly.

From what I can tell the whistle is coming from directly in/around the furnace, not the new duct work that was installed in the furnace room, and I cannot also hear it from the vents in the rest of the house.

I look forward to hearing any responses from the forum members, also a basic search on this forum did not seem to yield any particular posts that were relevant to this issue--albeit my lack of knowledge on this topic surely would affect the search results.

[hrbngr]

ok,

after some followup research searching some other threads, I removed the filter temporarily which caused the whistling to basically stop. So, the whistling happens at low speed and high speed (louder though) and it sounds like a tea kettle sound.

So, if it did not whistle at low speed but it did at high speed, that might mean that there is just too much air going through the filter, right? Is there anything in particular w/the way the filter slot was created that might be a problem? I can take some pics and post them here if that is possible. please let me know.

thanks!

p.s. one more thing, is there any forum here I can post to-to find a local contractor (northern virginia area) that can troubleshoot these kinds of problems? It's quite hard to get a feel just from dialing up ppl in the local yellow pages. I went w/my current contractor since he previously installed a replacement a/c system.

[Senior Tech]

The answer is quite obvious, call the contractor that installed it and have him fix it.

It's not an uncommon problem and I would hope the contractor you hired would stand behind his work.

[ar_hvac_man]

Tell the installer the return is too small.

[hrbngr]

ar hvac,

thanks for the info. is there any add'l info you can offer to explain what you mean? I guess I am wondering why it whistles on low speed as well as high speed if the air velocity would be less?

[ar_hvac_man]

cant give step by step to Diy'ers. Where is the filter located? apparently the velocity is high enough even on low speed to cause noise. im not saying for sure its the return size since i dont have enough info nor a crystal ball but inadequate returns are noisy and will sometimes whistle. call the company back and complain about the noise. they should have made sure the return was adequate before they started. it may be, like i said, i have little info to go on. they probably didnt seal the unit to the platform either. that could be where the problem lies and if so they need to make it right.

[hrbngr]

understood, I'll be trying out some options including completely covering the filter opening (which is right next to the furnace input in a vertical slot) w/duct tape to see if the duct work inherently whistles w/out a filter. I will also try a couple of different filters as well as covering the edge of one of the filters w/foam tape to see if a better seal of the filter cuts down the whistling.

[Senior Tech]

Tell the installer the return is too small.

Not necessarily.

Could be a number of things including that...might just be a slight adjustment is all thats needed.

[ar_hvac_man]

doesnt look like they sealed the return duct to the unit.

[JimDan]

I know this is an old post, and I am genuinely hopeful you were able to get this nuisance noise resolved to your satisfaction. As a Trane system owner myself with a seemingly identical problem that noone has been able to fix thus far, I would be eternally grateful if you could pass along the solution you eventually found to this problem. Thanks!