Heater on the fritz

[planet planet]

Three year old HVAC system and the heater for the first floor went out last night. Apparently it's back on now (have no idea why that is). This morning it kept acting like it was going to fire up and then nothing. We didn't notice until we went down there this morning because the top one was working fine.

[New Pagodi]

One of the most common things for furnaces is for the igniter to go out. Have you tried changing it yet?

[maddash]

Do you have a power "kill" switch on the unit? This happens rarely on ours, but sometimes the unit will not "kick on" and I have to power it down and power it back up. Not sure if this resets the software or whatever, but it does the trick. It happens so rarely that I haven't had it checked out.

If any HVAC experts can chime in on that one, I'd appreciate it.

[planet planet]

One of the most common things for furnaces is for the igniter to go out. Have you tried changing it yet?

But would it kick back on if that was the case? We have a friend of ours coming over who's fairly familiar with HVAC systems. I'll let you know what he tells us, although I wonder how much he'll be able to troubleshoot since it's working now.

[omaha_red]

this happened to us right after we moved into our house..
luckily my wife's brother is a heating/AC guy and he came over
and simply cleaned the sensor with an emory board type tool..
i guess the sensor was dirty and wasn't catching..

[New Pagodi]

One of the most common things for furnaces is for the igniter to go out. Have you tried changing it yet?

But would it kick back on if that was the case? We have a friend of ours coming over who's fairly familiar with HVAC systems. I'll let you know what he tells us, although I wonder how much he'll be able to troubleshoot since it's working now.

I missed that part and just read the "it kept acting like it was going to fire up and then nothing" part. Good luck trouble shooting.

[Hudler]

Those type of furnace calls are a pain for a service tech. Could be the flame sensor,could be a loose or damaged wire,could be the circuit board has a bad conection or it could just be a completely random thing and never happen again.

[Simbagal23]

We had this problem a while back (but our units are probably 9 years old) and it turned out to be a thermostat problem (thankfully!) on the main floor, the upstairs tstat seemed to fine. The tstats were also 9 years old so we didn't take any chances and replaced them both.....

Good luck!