Annual Furnace Maintenance - A Homeowner's Guide

Most heating contractors, and furnace manufacturers will recommend that you have your furnace checked by a qualified HVAC technician every year, prior to needing to turn on the heat for the season. A reputable and qualified HVAC technician will have the experience and knowledge to know the operating specs or your heating equipment. He/she will also know the check the things that you will not know.

However, there are things you can do yourself, to catch problems before they become more dangerous or costly. This article contains some things that an average homeowner can do to help properly maintain a heating system. If you have a propane or natural gas furnace, you must exercise extreme caution.

Shut off the gas and power supplies before proceeding! Do not do anything to your furnace with the gas or power on. Only qualified HVAC technicians should ever test your heating system while it is running.

The most obvious thing that a homeowner can do to maintain a heating system is to replace the furnace filter. It recommended that you use a high quality pleated style filter. In some cases, you will need to find a compatible equivalent to your existing furnace filter. Furnace filters should be checked monthly. Depending on your local air quality, and the type of filter, some higher end furnace filters may last significantly longer.

One of the most common reasons people will call a technician complaining of having no heat is that they have a blockage in the drain system. All high efficiency furnaces have a drain hose and drain trap of some sort. Bacteria can grow into a slimy formation that restricts condensation flow through the drain system. You can pour household bleach into the drain lines to kill this bacteria.

Outside the house, check the furnace intake pipes and exhaust pipes to be certain that trees and shrubs are not growing into them. Remove the intake and exhaust pipe and check to see if there are any leaves or other obstructions in them. This is another major problem people have with their heating systems.

Check if any wire connections are loose or shorted. Test the plug harness connections to make sure that they are not loose. The blower compartments and burners can be vacuumed to prevent contamination of the blower motor and burners. If your blower motor requires oiling, you may need to call a qualified service technician. The blower assembly will most likely need to be removed in order to oil it on both sides.

It's recommended to have a service technician clean the burners and inspect the heat exchanger. The technician should also clean the flame sensor. People will often break the igniter thinking that it is the flame sensor. Have the technician check pressure switches, limit controls, and other safeties.

Although these steps may not seem like there is that much you can really do yourself, you should ask the service technician as many questions about your system as you can. Being informed about your heating system can be very helpful in diagnosing or even preventing a problem. Down the line, it will save you money.

Find out more about heat exchanger maintenance at my heat exchanger cleaning equipment site.

Heat Exchanger Safety - A Maintained Furnace is a Safe Furnace

Heat exchangers are pieces of equipment that are used for the transfer of heat from one fluid to another. When a heat exchanger goes bad, chances are, important things stop working. When your automobile engine is overheating, it's likely that the heat exchanger is the problem. You probably call it a radiator, but it's one type of heat exchanger. In your radiator, antifreeze cools air that flows past it. This air is then blown by a fan onto the engine to keep it cool. If the radiator doesn't work properly, you won't be driving very far until the situation is fixed.

Your home heating system also has a heat exchanger. In fact, nearly every piece of mechanical equipment that has a need to intentionally heat or cool part of a system does. Inside your furnace there is a combustion chamber. There is a metal wall that separates the internal combustion from the air that flows past the heat exchanger and on through the ductwork to heat your home. You need this separation because you don't want the toxic gases inside mixing with the air that is distributed throughout your home. In the previous example, a faulty heat exchanger could lead to a broken down automobile, but in your home you could be gambling with your life.

Carbon Monoxide can be present in the combustion gases. It's supposed to be contained inside, but as time goes on, it becomes possible for the heat exchanger in your furnace to crack or warp. Each time your furnace turns on, the metal wall heats up and expands. During the off cycles, the metal of the heat exchanger cools and contracts. Over time this repeated process of expansion and contraction of the metal takes it's toll. The metal can become fatigued, and eventually warp out of shape, or just plain break.

As I noted before, these metal walls were designed to keep the toxic combustion gases inside the heat exchanger chamber. Guess what happens if there is a crack? That's right, the toxic gases inside can mix with the forced air that is being blown through the ductwork and into your home. Having a reliable Carbon Monoxide detector is an inexpensive measure to protect yourself and your family from the danger of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, but you can also take some proactive measures to protect against any potential danger.

Give your furnace an annual checkup, just before the heating season, to check the condition of the burners, the heat exchanger, the furnace filter, and other components that can affect the performance of your furnace. I recommend have a certified HVAC specialist do this. Only a certified specialist will have the knowledge and experience needed to know exactly what to look for, and where to look for it, as well as knowing what the operating specifications for your unit should be.

If your furnace is over 10 years old, it is even more important to keep that annual checkup. This is the time period where the years of wear and tear on your heat exchanger make a failure of the heat exchanger wall significantly more likely. Keeping your furnace in good health can also help keep you and your family in good health.

Find out more about heat exchanger safety at my heat exchanger cleaning equipment site.

How to Clean Your Pellet Stove

Most of the time wood pellet stoves will run better and more efficient when they are clean. The air inside can move around better and this will allow the appropriate combustion in the firebox. You can clean your pellet stove yourself and it will not take much time or work at all. You will have to have a few simple tools in order to get a better clean and have an easier time as well.

A few things that you will need to clean your pellet stove are a paintbrush, paper towels, cloths, shop vac and the scraping rod that usually comes along with your stove. When you place a new bag of pellets into the hopper of the stove, it is a good idea to clean the heat exchanger. When you are cleaning this it will allow the heat to move from the firebox to your area a lot easier. It is best to use a good quality pellet to avoid cleaning more often.

When you shut your pellet stove off, you can then use the paintbrush to clean the dust that the stove produces. You can use any other type of duster or brush for this job too. The brush will have the ability to get into the small cracks and spaces that the dust can fall into. You will then be able to vacuum the ash out of the collection pan easily.

Doing simple cleaning each month will make it easier to do a thorough cleaning every few months or so. You can use your brush or shop vac to clean the tough to see areas that are going to need cleaned. Each year you should get a professional furnace cleaner check your gaskets and motors to make sure that they are running freely. They will be able to get into the tough areas and see if there is anything that looks like it needs replaced or fixed. Also have the firepot cleaned well wand test your battery back up system if you have one equipped on your pellet stove.

When it is time to shut your pellet stove off for the summer, you should take out all of the pellets from the hopper. Pellets that are left inside over the summer may accumulate moisture and not need feed properly when you turn your stove back on in the fall. You will have to unplug your stove to protect in if there are any lightning strikes or even a power surge can harm your stove.

You should also check your owner’s manual to see if there are any other recommended cleaning and safety tips to follow. It is always smart to use caution and common sense when you are using a pellet stove. When you follow the rules and the instructions, you will see that this is a great way to heat your home.

Copyright 2006 - Ivar Rudi. Ivar suggests you find great market for less by shopping online today. For more information and resources about this subject check out: http://www.pellet-stoves.org/ and also http://www.wood-pellet-stoves.com/ and http://www.woodburning-stoves.org/

Keeping Cooling Towers and Heat Exchangers Clean

Filtration Systems Can Reduce Maintenance and Downtime.

To strike an interesting analogy, your cooling tower and heat exchanger is what the lungs and heart are to the human body; when either aren't working properly, it effects other parts of the body and your health suffers. Similarly, when your cooling tower and heat exchanger isn't clean, the heat exchange process doesn't work efficiently and the health of your production and process cooling system suffers.

Process cooling systems that rely on cooling towers to dissipate heat from process cooling water accomplish this by drawing massive volumes of air into the cooling tower as the water travels through the fill material on its way back to the basin. Through the natural evaporative process, heat is dissipated from the water before it reaches the water basin from which it is re-circulated through the chiller then through the heat exchanger and back again (kind of like when you sweat while working and letting the air evaporate the perspiration to cool you down). It is important to realize that cooling towers are gigantic air scrubbers that capture all airborne debris that happen to be floating nearby, and if your system doesn't have effective filtration, the debris can clog the fill and get circulated and trapped in the heat exchanger where it can build-up, restrict water flow and cause your process equipment to malfunction due to overheating.

An example of this is illustrated by a major automotive assembly facility that had faced periodic downtime due to their robotic welding systems not holding tolerances and causing quality problems. After the robotic technicians spent several days trying to initially solve the problem, one of the maintenance workers opened the heat exchanger and discovered that it was impacted with cottonwood seed, insects and other debris - flow had been reduced and the robotic equipment was running hot. Now you might be asking yourself, whey didn't they have some sort of filtration equipment? The answer is simple; at the time the facility was built, the ambient conditions in that area didn't require a filtration system. However, as the years went by and the area became more developed and cottonwood tree populations grew, the need eventually surfaced.

The interesting thing to note about this situation is that even though cleaning the heat exchanger got the robotic welding system back on-line and running at peak performance, it didn't solve the problem. In fact, cleaning heat exchangers is like taking a cold capsule to relieve the symptoms of a cold. Unless you treat the root cause of the problem, the cooling system will suffer time and again. The root cause in this case and in most heat exchanger fouling situations is the cooling tower - stop the debris from getting into the cooling tower and it will protect the entire process cooling system including fill, cooling water, chiller and heat exchanger. With the proper filtration technology, your process cooling system will stay clean and running efficiently all season long.

Selecting The Right Filtration System

It is important to realize that optimizing the ecology and operational efficiency of your evaporative cooling system is best accomplished by combining a chemical treatment regimen with some type of filtration. The reason is that chemical treatment specifically targets suspended solids and particulates of 40 microns and below, while filtration systems are designed to stop larger debris, especially the kind that causes system clogging and fouling.

For cooling tower filtration, there are two general technologies: Water Based Systems for which there are a few different variations and Air Intake Filtration Systems. With water-based systems, the choices include basic water strainers that remove debris by simply passing water through a mesh strainer; sand filtration systems that remove debris by passing the water through sand and centrifugal separators that spin the water and remove the debris through centrifugal action. In contrast, Air Intake Filter Systems remove the debris by filtering the air as it is being drawn into the cooling tower, keeping the debris out of the system in the first place. When considering your filtration options, the following questions should be asked.

• What is the cost associated with downtime due to heat exchanger or cooling tower fouling or clogging? (Knowing this will help you justify your filtration system cost)
• What type of debris is most problematic (can you see it or is it microscopic)?
• Specifically what part of the system does the filter protect?
• Which system provides the greatest filtration surface area (this can directly impact frequency of cleaning - the smaller the filter the more frequently it needs cleaning)
• Can the system be installed without shutting down the cooling tower? (If the cooling tower must be shut down for installation, you need to factor lost productivity into the cost of your filtration system if it's not being installed during shutdown periods.)
• What is the cost associated with both the filter and installation?
• How easy is the system to install and maintain?

Answering the above questions will help you to fully understand your options and to make the best choice for your operation.

In the case of the automotive manufacturer, the solution they selected was the Air Intake Filter system. The reason was that they needed a system that would protect their entire process cooling system including fill material, cooling water, chiller and heat exchanger. When they evaluated water-based systems, they discovered that the options provided varying degrees of protection for the chiller and heat exchanger but didn't protect the cooling tower where the root of their problem was. If they had selected a water-based system, their cooling tower would have still drawn airborne debris into both the fill and water where the water filter would have captured the debris before it circulated throughout the system. From a maintenance standpoint, that would have solved the heat exchanger problem but it would have done little to reduce maintenance on the cooling tower. Further, when they compared the cost of water based filtration versus air intake filtration technologies, Air Intake Filtration was found to be the more cost effective approach for their operation.

If you are not currently using a filtration system as part of your process cooling system, then any filtration technology will give you more protection than you have now, however, selecting a solution best suited to your operation requires that you know what kind of debris is the problem and where it is getting into the system. As a rule of thumb, " don't select a small debris solution to solve a large debris problem". Conversely, "don't select a large debris solution to solve a small debris problem". There is clearly a place for both water based filtration and air intake filtration - be sure you're selecting the right filtration for your specific need.

If you are looking to protect only your chiller and heat exchanger from airborne debris, then one of the water-based filtration technologies in combination with a good water treatment program can help you manage the debris that gets into the cooling water. If on the other hand, you're looking for full process cooling system protection, then you should look at Air Intake Filtration - It will stop the debris from getting into your system in the first place.

Air Solution Company developed and patented the first Air Intake Filter specifically engineered to mount to the outside of cooling towers and other HVAC equipment for purposes of stopping the debris before it entered into the system. Since that time, Air Solution Company has been manufacturing and has introduced a variety of other innovative filter systems including its new Fine Mesh Filter which is engineered for use on small and medium size refrigeration coils and machine fan intake housing units. Air Solution Company Randy Simmons is with Air Solution Company, author of articles can be reached at http://www.airsolutioncompany.com

Heat Exchanger Safety - A Maintained Furnace is a Safe Furnace

Heat exchangers are pieces of equipment that are used for the transfer of heat from one fluid to another. When a heat exchanger goes bad, chances are, important things stop working. When your automobile engine is overheating, it's likely that the heat exchanger is the problem. You probably call it a radiator, but it's one type of heat exchanger. In your radiator, antifreeze cools air that flows past it. This air is then blown by a fan onto the engine to keep it cool. If the radiator doesn't work properly, you won't be driving very far until the situation is fixed.

Your home heating system also has a heat exchanger. In fact, nearly every piece of mechanical equipment that has a need to intentionally heat or cool part of a system does. Inside your furnace there is a combustion chamber. There is a metal wall that separates the internal combustion from the air that flows past the heat exchanger and on through the ductwork to heat your home. You need this separation because you don't want the toxic gases inside mixing with the air that is distributed throughout your home. In the previous example, a faulty heat exchanger could lead to a broken down automobile, but in your home you could be gambling with your life.

Carbon Monoxide can be present in the combustion gases. It's supposed to be contained inside, but as time goes on, it becomes possible for the heat exchanger in your furnace to crack or warp. Each time your furnace turns on, the metal wall heats up and expands. During the off cycles, the metal of the heat exchanger cools and contracts. Over time this repeated process of expansion and contraction of the metal takes it's toll. The metal can become fatigued, and eventually warp out of shape, or just plain break.

As I noted before, these metal walls were designed to keep the toxic combustion gases inside the heat exchanger chamber. Guess what happens if there is a crack? That's right, the toxic gases inside can mix with the forced air that is being blown through the ductwork and into your home. Having a reliable Carbon Monoxide detector is an inexpensive measure to protect yourself and your family from the danger of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, but you can also take some proactive measures to protect against any potential danger.

Give your furnace an annual checkup, just before the heating season, to check the condition of the burners, the heat exchanger, the furnace filter, and other components that can affect the performance of your furnace. I recommend have a certified HVAC specialist do this. Only a certified specialist will have the knowledge and experience needed to know exactly what to look for, and where to look for it, as well as knowing what the operating specifications for your unit should be.

If your furnace is over 10 years old, it is even more important to keep that annual checkup. This is the time period where the years of wear and tear on your heat exchanger make a failure of the heat exchanger wall significantly more likely. Keeping your furnace in good health can also help keep you and your family in good health.

Find out more about heat exchanger safety at my heat exchanger cleaning equipment site.

Filtration Systems Can Reduce Maintenance and Downtime.

To strike an interesting analogy, your cooling tower and heat exchanger is what the lungs and heart are to the human body; when either aren't working properly, it effects other parts of the body and your health suffers. Similarly, when your cooling tower and heat exchanger isn't clean, the heat exchange process doesn't work efficiently and the health of your production and process cooling system suffers.

Process cooling systems that rely on cooling towers to dissipate heat from process cooling water accomplish this by drawing massive volumes of air into the cooling tower as the water travels through the fill material on its way back to the basin. Through the natural evaporative process, heat is dissipated from the water before it reaches the water basin from which it is re-circulated through the chiller then through the heat exchanger and back again (kind of like when you sweat while working and letting the air evaporate the perspiration to cool you down). It is important to realize that cooling towers are gigantic air scrubbers that capture all airborne debris that happen to be floating nearby, and if your system doesn't have effective filtration, the debris can clog the fill and get circulated and trapped in the heat exchanger where it can build-up, restrict water flow and cause your process equipment to malfunction due to overheating.

An example of this is illustrated by a major automotive assembly facility that had faced periodic downtime due to their robotic welding systems not holding tolerances and causing quality problems. After the robotic technicians spent several days trying to initially solve the problem, one of the maintenance workers opened the heat exchanger and discovered that it was impacted with cottonwood seed, insects and other debris - flow had been reduced and the robotic equipment was running hot. Now you might be asking yourself, whey didn't they have some sort of filtration equipment? The answer is simple; at the time the facility was built, the ambient conditions in that area didn't require a filtration system. However, as the years went by and the area became more developed and cottonwood tree populations grew, the need eventually surfaced.

The interesting thing to note about this situation is that even though cleaning the heat exchanger got the robotic welding system back on-line and running at peak performance, it didn't solve the problem. In fact, cleaning heat exchangers is like taking a cold capsule to relieve the symptoms of a cold. Unless you treat the root cause of the problem, the cooling system will suffer time and again. The root cause in this case and in most heat exchanger fouling situations is the cooling tower - stop the debris from getting into the cooling tower and it will protect the entire process cooling system including fill, cooling water, chiller and heat exchanger. With the proper filtration technology, your process cooling system will stay clean and running efficiently all season long.

Selecting The Right Filtration System

It is important to realize that optimizing the ecology and operational efficiency of your evaporative cooling system is best accomplished by combining a chemical treatment regimen with some type of filtration. The reason is that chemical treatment specifically targets suspended solids and particulates of 40 microns and below, while filtration systems are designed to stop larger debris, especially the kind that causes system clogging and fouling.

For cooling tower filtration, there are two general technologies: Water Based Systems for which there are a few different variations and Air Intake Filtration Systems. With water-based systems, the choices include basic water strainers that remove debris by simply passing water through a mesh strainer; sand filtration systems that remove debris by passing the water through sand and centrifugal separators that spin the water and remove the debris through centrifugal action. In contrast, Air Intake Filter Systems remove the debris by filtering the air as it is being drawn into the cooling tower, keeping the debris out of the system in the first place. When considering your filtration options, the following questions should be asked.

• What is the cost associated with downtime due to heat exchanger or cooling tower fouling or clogging? (Knowing this will help you justify your filtration system cost)
• What type of debris is most problematic (can you see it or is it microscopic)?
• Specifically what part of the system does the filter protect?
• Which system provides the greatest filtration surface area (this can directly impact frequency of cleaning - the smaller the filter the more frequently it needs cleaning)
• Can the system be installed without shutting down the cooling tower? (If the cooling tower must be shut down for installation, you need to factor lost productivity into the cost of your filtration system if it's not being installed during shutdown periods.)
• What is the cost associated with both the filter and installation?
• How easy is the system to install and maintain?

Answering the above questions will help you to fully understand your options and to make the best choice for your operation.

In the case of the automotive manufacturer, the solution they selected was the Air Intake Filter system. The reason was that they needed a system that would protect their entire process cooling system including fill material, cooling water, chiller and heat exchanger. When they evaluated water-based systems, they discovered that the options provided varying degrees of protection for the chiller and heat exchanger but didn't protect the cooling tower where the root of their problem was. If they had selected a water-based system, their cooling tower would have still drawn airborne debris into both the fill and water where the water filter would have captured the debris before it circulated throughout the system. From a maintenance standpoint, that would have solved the heat exchanger problem but it would have done little to reduce maintenance on the cooling tower. Further, when they compared the cost of water based filtration versus air intake filtration technologies, Air Intake Filtration was found to be the more cost effective approach for their operation.

If you are not currently using a filtration system as part of your process cooling system, then any filtration technology will give you more protection than you have now, however, selecting a solution best suited to your operation requires that you know what kind of debris is the problem and where it is getting into the system. As a rule of thumb, " don't select a small debris solution to solve a large debris problem". Conversely, "don't select a large debris solution to solve a small debris problem". There is clearly a place for both water based filtration and air intake filtration - be sure you're selecting the right filtration for your specific need.

If you are looking to protect only your chiller and heat exchanger from airborne debris, then one of the water-based filtration technologies in combination with a good water treatment program can help you manage the debris that gets into the cooling water. If on the other hand, you're looking for full process cooling system protection, then you should look at Air Intake Filtration - It will stop the debris from getting into your system in the first place.

Air Solution Company developed and patented the first Air Intake Filter specifically engineered to mount to the outside of cooling towers and other HVAC equipment for purposes of stopping the debris before it entered into the system. Since that time, Air Solution Company has been manufacturing and has introduced a variety of other innovative filter systems including its new Fine Mesh Filter which is engineered for use on small and medium size refrigeration coils and machine fan intake housing units. Air Solution Company Randy Simmons is with Air Solution Company, author of articles can be reached at http://www.airsolutioncompany.com

Plate Heat Exchanger Cleaning In Place (CIP)

Frequency of CIP is once a year per plate heat exchanger. However, when any of the plate heat exchanger performance has deteriorated, the CIP need to be carried out immediately.

Drain out the remnant oil from the plate heat exchanger that is scheduled for cleaning.

Dismantle the flanges that are connected to the plate heat exchanger for fixing flexible hose of CIP line.

Fill in fresh water into the CIP tank until the marked level and heat the water to 70 to 90°C.

Circulate the hot water from CIP tank to plate heat exchanger and back to CIP tank for 4 to 6 hours.

After 4 to 6 hours drain out the water from the Plate Heat Exchanger, CIP line and CIP tank.

Prepare 8 % of caustic solution by pouring 6 bags X 25 kgs of caustic soda pearls and fill water into CIP tank.

Note: Wear personal protective equipment (PPE) like goggles, rubber glove and dust mask when preparing lye solution.

Heat the caustic solution to 70 to 80°C.

Circulate the caustic solution from CIP tank to plate heat exchanger and back to CIP tank for 4 to 5 days.

Record the flow rate of the initial caustic flow and take a sample of the circulated water (for reference).

After 1 day of caustic circulation, stop the CIP pump for 10-15 minutes. Then run it again. Repeat this step in a space of every six hours. This is to aggressively loosen any stubborn scale sticking on the plate surface.

After 2 or 3 days of caustic circulation, stop the CIP pump and reverse the flow. The flexible hose connection needs to be changed.

Repeat the steps.

After circulating for 4 to 5 days take the flow rate reading and water sample of the circulated caustic solution.

Drain out the used caustic solution from the plate heat exchanger, CIP line and CIP tank and clean the CIP tank.

Drained Lye solution will be pumped to Effluent Plant for further treatment.

Fill in water into the CIP tank and heat the water to 70 to 80°C.

Circulate the hot water from CIP tank to Plate Heat Exchanger and back to CIP tank for 4 to 6 hours.

Repeat this exercise for 3 times.

After 3 times of washing with hot water check the PH of hot water.

If the PH is 7 which is neutral, drain out the water from the plate heat exchanger, CIP line and CIP tank.

Record down the CIP of plate heat exchanger in weekly cleaning checklist.

Plate Heat Exchanger Cleaning

Cleaning Plate Heat Exchanger - Oil/Oil with high temperature

This method can be used for plate heat exchanger cleaning using the "cleaning in place" (CIP) method. This is the cheapest way to clean a plate heat exchanger and it is better then dismantling, washing and re-gasketing the plates. We need to use caustic solution at a temperature between 60-70oC.

Cleaning Plate Heat Exchanger - Oil/Water with high temperature

This method can be used for plate heat exchanger cleaning using the "cleaning in place" (CIP) method. This is the cheapest way to clean a plate heat exchanger and it is better then dismantling, washing and re-gasketing the plates. We need to use phosphoric or sulfuric acid at a temperature between 60-70oC.