- #1
UrbanFarmEngineer
- 48
- 7
- TL;DR Summary
- Current Leakage from Furnace: Solved
Here are the details.
Hey Everyone:
Thank you to all who commented on the original post with how to help. I thought you may be interested in knowing how it all turned out.
It took me a while to wrap my mind around what you guys were telling me but I am happy to report that the issues are diagnosed and solved. I got lots of good advice from all of your posts and from your PMs. In addition: I got two amazing book recommendations earlier today that I am looking forward to diving into to establish a foundation in the principles of electrical circuits so I can better keep up with what you are talking about because as terrible as the furnace experience has been it made me love learning about circuits.
So here is what's going on with the furnace:
1) Open/Faulty Limit Switch: and it's the kind that can't be reset manually. This was disovered thanks to the person who recommended I do dead testing which was @Guineafowl and I believe @Averagesupernova
2) Short to Ground in the wires leading back from the blower fan: they were not bundled/protected properly and kept rubbing up against a somewhat sharp piece of metal that extends out from the blower fan housing for some reason. A few of wires had scrapes in the insulation and exposed copper. Thank you to the people who PMd me to do visual inspections of the wires after a load and not before, since everything was still working.
3) Unprotected Power Line: Flexible cord from condensate pump inserted into same wire access point as main power line (BX). There was an AntiShort on the BX that protected the main power line conductors but the sharp side where the BX was cut sliced into the condensate power line and gouged right into the conductors. It's hard to see in the pics but you could see copper.
At Present: net current on dedicated main power line to furnace = 0 mA. Mission Accomplished.
Why did I try to fix it myself? When the local gasCo gave me notice of two electrical infraction and I called the installers they came to do an electrical diagnostic and repair. They showed up with no multimeter, no instruments of any sort. Not even a visual inspection. They did not even open the jBox behind the cords entering the cabinet in the picture below to examine the black cord which is visibly damaged! The guy just put a piece of tape over it from the outside and said, "furnace runs, means there is nothing wrong.". And there was nothing that I could say to him to make him do anything more. He just got really mad.
Researched installation company: No natural gas licence, not affiliated with any sort of electrical licence, no permit applied for when they installed the furnace (which was less than a year ago).
INSTALLERS' SOLUTION TO SHORT TO GROUND INFRACTION:
A little blurred:
Thank you to all who commented on the original post with how to help. I thought you may be interested in knowing how it all turned out.
It took me a while to wrap my mind around what you guys were telling me but I am happy to report that the issues are diagnosed and solved. I got lots of good advice from all of your posts and from your PMs. In addition: I got two amazing book recommendations earlier today that I am looking forward to diving into to establish a foundation in the principles of electrical circuits so I can better keep up with what you are talking about because as terrible as the furnace experience has been it made me love learning about circuits.
So here is what's going on with the furnace:
1) Open/Faulty Limit Switch: and it's the kind that can't be reset manually. This was disovered thanks to the person who recommended I do dead testing which was @Guineafowl and I believe @Averagesupernova
2) Short to Ground in the wires leading back from the blower fan: they were not bundled/protected properly and kept rubbing up against a somewhat sharp piece of metal that extends out from the blower fan housing for some reason. A few of wires had scrapes in the insulation and exposed copper. Thank you to the people who PMd me to do visual inspections of the wires after a load and not before, since everything was still working.
3) Unprotected Power Line: Flexible cord from condensate pump inserted into same wire access point as main power line (BX). There was an AntiShort on the BX that protected the main power line conductors but the sharp side where the BX was cut sliced into the condensate power line and gouged right into the conductors. It's hard to see in the pics but you could see copper.
At Present: net current on dedicated main power line to furnace = 0 mA. Mission Accomplished.
Why did I try to fix it myself? When the local gasCo gave me notice of two electrical infraction and I called the installers they came to do an electrical diagnostic and repair. They showed up with no multimeter, no instruments of any sort. Not even a visual inspection. They did not even open the jBox behind the cords entering the cabinet in the picture below to examine the black cord which is visibly damaged! The guy just put a piece of tape over it from the outside and said, "furnace runs, means there is nothing wrong.". And there was nothing that I could say to him to make him do anything more. He just got really mad.
Researched installation company: No natural gas licence, not affiliated with any sort of electrical licence, no permit applied for when they installed the furnace (which was less than a year ago).
INSTALLERS' SOLUTION TO SHORT TO GROUND INFRACTION:
A little blurred:
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