Archived from the Tools In Action forum (Around The House). This thread is read-only.
I do more and more work around the house, but I just had the furnace guy come and clean the furnace, cost around $240, not a bad price, but felt I may be able do it myself given some google-fu. Nice guy though.
I don’t see a lot of information on DIY HVAC work and it sort of scares me. Is this a DIY area or not?
Modern furnaces are self diagnosing now for some problems. Older ones it could be something as simpler as a thermalcouple
Go for it. If you’ve pulled things apart and put them back together before, I’m sure you could do it. I’m not playing on my bais either because it means taking work away from guys like us (i’m a plumber, but will help out the HVAC side of things at work if need be) but it requires following your nose and getting a little dirty (if that)
What sort of furnace? Fuel Oil or a gas furnace or electric?
I wouldn’t blame you for getting someone else to clean it for you if it was fuel oil, a gas furnace is like a childs toy compared tho…
Though the modern furnace has a curcit board that gives a code. You still need to know how to read the code and figure out why the part went bad. Sometimes we have to take a component out of the system to see if that is the cause of the problem. Recently replaced a 2 stage heat exchanger. The furnace never went into high fire and went off on pressure switch. We had to call the manufacturer with this issue. After a long phone call found the cause of the issues and the solution.
I personally hate going on a service call after the homeowner has “tried to solve the issue. The first thing I have to do is fix the homeowner repair and then find the real issue.
Paying $240 for a furnace cleaning/tune up is very high. Our shop does this for less than half of that price.
KnarlyCarl wrote:
Go for it. If you’ve pulled things apart and put them back together before, I’m sure you could do it. I’m not playing on my bais either because it means taking work away from guys like us (i’m a plumber, but will help out the HVAC side of things at work if need be) but it requires following your nose and getting a little dirty (if that)
What sort of furnace? Fuel Oil or a gas furnace or electric?
I wouldn’t blame you for getting someone else to clean it for you if it was fuel oil, a gas furnace is like a childs toy compared tho…
Sorry it’s an oil boiler. I say furnace because when I say “boiler” I get a blank stare usually.
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you could open yourself to liability on servicing your unit, especially an oil burner
Weird Tolkienish Figure wrote:
20 hours ago, Weird Tolkienish Figure said:
Sorry it’s an oil boiler. I say furnace because when I say “boiler” I get a blank stare usually.
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Ah ok oil boiler is the trickiest, but I love hot water heat personally.
I can see why they charged that much, especially if they did a full cleaning
Jrhky36 wrote:
On 12/30/2016 at 9:00 AM, Jrhky36 said:Though the modern furnace has a curcit board that gives a code. You still need to know how to read the code and figure out why the part went bad. Sometimes we have to take a component out of the system to see if that is the cause of the problem. Recently replaced a 2 stage heat exchanger. The furnace never went into high fire and went off on pressure switch. We had to call the manufacturer with this issue. After a long phone call found the cause of the issues and the solution.
I personally hate going on a service call after the homeowner has “tried to solve the issue. The first thing I have to do is fix the homeowner repair and then find the real issue.
Paying $240 for a furnace cleaning/tune up is very high. Our shop does this for less than half of that price.
That really depends if your a techy guy. some really can’t do anything, They don’t even know how to unscrew. But for me I need to call the manufacturer after you did your best, then my last resort would be calling HVAC guys.
I think, better to don’t use DIY
You know HVAC is not hard, when I started working maintenance I had no clue about anything HVAC. A few YouTube videos later and now I can screw up my AC unit with the best of them
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