Boy , that always makes it harder to recover the Freon. I hate running around the yard trying to bag the freon in my heavy duty hefty trash bag. The things our bosses will make us do to protect the enviroment are unreallistic.
My last call today was a Sanyo 2 1/2 ton AC not cooling. Compressor trys to start then trips circuit breaker. So i reset the breaker, put my amp probe on the compressor(to check for LRA), push in the disconnect and BOOOOM!!. The terminal on the start winding actually blew out of the compressor. I was now standing in a 8 ft tall cloud of refrigerant. I knew i hated Sanyo units for a reason.
Boy , that always makes it harder to recover the Freon. I hate running around the yard trying to bag the freon in my heavy duty hefty trash bag. The things our bosses will make us do to protect the enviroment are unreallistic.
A tough lesson to learn. Never stand in front of the terminals when diagnosing. When I service a furnace, I never look into the burner area upon ignition. Lost my bangs and eyebrows once. Glad you were not hurt! Peace.
Good advice about not peering into the burners during ignition... Had a pilot light go out on me on an Old Lennox G8 140,000 btu furnace. Hot water tank provided the required ignition souce as the Furnace gas valve opened on a call for heat almost the same time the pilot went out. Takes about 6 to 10 seconds for the thermocouple to cool off enough to drop out the valve. I peeked inside to see what was going on, as the flames shot from the H.W.T. Too close to the furnace to begin with... cross lit and singed eyebrows, lashes and tightned the skin on my face for a day or two...
I count myself lucky. Even went out and bought a lottery ticket that day! But my luck didn't last. I still have to go to work for pay.
Teach the apprentices right... and learn from their questions and ideas.
In one of my previous lives when I was an auto mechanic I was charging this old p.o.s Toyota. The liquid line exploded just as I was checking the pressures and it sounded like a 12 gauge shot gun. Scared the sh*t out of everyone and I about crapped on myself.
Amen about delayed ignition.
After years of research, I've developed a delayed ignition math formula.
It's how many seconds it takes the gas to find the flame, compared to how big your eyes get when you're sitting in front of it.
Another situation to watch for... had a bank of three FlameMaster (Flameblasters) furnaces heating a Community Hall. They shared a common Return Air. I condemned these furnaces, as the heat exchangers were rusted right through. Gave them the option to replace the Furnaces... they opted to go elsewhere and replaced the heat exchangers. Only thing is, the faceplate where the exchangers bolt too, were also rusted out.
Anytime any one furnace came on... would draw air back through these rusted holes... and when a second furnace would attempt to fire, six of the eight burner tubes would ignite ok... but the burners on each end would not light due to the nat gas on the pilot 'zip' strip would just be sucked into the blower compartment through the rusted face plate... and after about a minute.... BOOM! The two unlit burners would crosslight.
New uniform pants required after that!
Teach the apprentices right... and learn from their questions and ideas.
Re Flamemaster burner replacement
1) there is a faceplate that is available to cover in rusted area. It is cheap and should be replaced if intregrity of original metal is not good.
2) Depending on age - there are good flame carryover systems available today and can likely retrofit this one.
3) Also a very likely contributor may be a negative pressure in the space.
I am former Engineered Air service manager (retired). We purchased assets of Flamemaster and made lots of changes to improve product. I beleive my email is on profile if you want further assistance
Simply scary
It was this incident that prompted me to contact your people... to obtain said face plate.
Once the face plate was replace... the problem was resolved, as it was the blower air 'migrating' through the very small openings of rust on that old face plate that caused the gas to NOT make the lighting across the cross lighter... and when the gas buildup in the two aberant cells was ripe enough... BOOM... lose the toupee!
Negative pressure is always a concern for anomalies like this... but much investigation was performed by way of using CO detectors around the flue's of the bank of furnaces, and the single Commercial HWT in the room. None found. If this didn't solve the problem, I'd have commissioned a service company that is capable of doing a commercial 'Blower-Door' test in the Utility room.
But like you said... it was a simple fix. Replace the face plates.
Problem solved.
What is your e-mail address? I would love to exchange info on other issues as well... Mine is Removed
I have another thread, addressing a Flamemaster hallway make up air problem, you might want to take a look at... or just email me, and such... if you will.
Hope to hear from you.
Ric
Ric, please put your email in your profile!
Last edited by HeyBob; 12-23-2008 at 03:24 AM.
Teach the apprentices right... and learn from their questions and ideas.
"Nothing else can poison our culture, corrupt our society or ruin the character of our people like unearned money or unearned opportunity." -- James R. Cook
"Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever." Thomas Edison, 1889.