Here's the short story, my furnace is overheating and shutting itself off and the HVAC company is suggesting to remove a burner so that it doesn't run so hot because they think my furnace is over sized for my 2100 sqft home. Is this really a typical thing to do?
Here's the long story with more background:
My York GY9S100C16DH11H furnace (2006/2007 92% efficiency model) shows 4 blinking red lights for high limit switch open. I tested the limit switch myself with a multi meter to confirm that it is opening when the furnace shuts itself off which it was, then I tested the limit switch in a pot of boiling water while monitoring the water temp with a meat thermometer to confirm that the limit switch is not opening prematurely. It opened right at 180F as designed, so the limit switch is not faulty. Furnace filter is also not the problem.
Due to the design of my furnace model, further troubleshooting would require partial disassembly to open up the furnace to get to the blower motor/housing which I'm not comfortable with so I called an HVAC company. They got into the blower housing area and found that the capacitor for the blower motor was going bad, resulting in the blower not blowing enough hot air through to keep the furnace from overheating. I asked them if the blower motor and other internals like the coils all looked good and they said yes. They replaced the capacitor and called it good, but after they had already left the furnace eventually overheated again and shut itself off with limit switch open error.
They came back out and lowered the gas pressure in the furnace and took some temperature readings with a digital thermometer at different parts of the furnace and eventually concluded that the furnace is over sized for my home and they recommended removing one of the 5 burners from the furnace so that it doesn't put out as much heat and hence overheat itself. I found this conclusion perplexing because the furnace did not have any overheating issues previously so if it was really over sized for my home wouldn't it have had over heating issues to start? To me this comes off as a band aid solution that doesn't address the real cause of why the furnace is overheating. Is removing a burner from a furnace really a typical thing done to address overheating issues?
Here's the long story with more background:
My York GY9S100C16DH11H furnace (2006/2007 92% efficiency model) shows 4 blinking red lights for high limit switch open. I tested the limit switch myself with a multi meter to confirm that it is opening when the furnace shuts itself off which it was, then I tested the limit switch in a pot of boiling water while monitoring the water temp with a meat thermometer to confirm that the limit switch is not opening prematurely. It opened right at 180F as designed, so the limit switch is not faulty. Furnace filter is also not the problem.
Due to the design of my furnace model, further troubleshooting would require partial disassembly to open up the furnace to get to the blower motor/housing which I'm not comfortable with so I called an HVAC company. They got into the blower housing area and found that the capacitor for the blower motor was going bad, resulting in the blower not blowing enough hot air through to keep the furnace from overheating. I asked them if the blower motor and other internals like the coils all looked good and they said yes. They replaced the capacitor and called it good, but after they had already left the furnace eventually overheated again and shut itself off with limit switch open error.
They came back out and lowered the gas pressure in the furnace and took some temperature readings with a digital thermometer at different parts of the furnace and eventually concluded that the furnace is over sized for my home and they recommended removing one of the 5 burners from the furnace so that it doesn't put out as much heat and hence overheat itself. I found this conclusion perplexing because the furnace did not have any overheating issues previously so if it was really over sized for my home wouldn't it have had over heating issues to start? To me this comes off as a band aid solution that doesn't address the real cause of why the furnace is overheating. Is removing a burner from a furnace really a typical thing done to address overheating issues?
source https://hvac-talk.com/vbb/showthread.php?2224026-HVAC-Company-Recommends-Removing-Burners-To-Fix-Overheating-Furnace&goto=newpost
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