The middle of an exacting Ohio winter is no time to be challenged with a furnace blowing cold air. You want to coil up in an expedient house after you deal with harsh weather conditions, so it’s time to take a look at the details. The furnace may be gusting cold. Some matters with the heat are easy to fix, but others necessitate a capable professional to get you away from the space heater and back to a house that’s sincere all over.
Check the Thermostat Fan Setting
If your heater’s blower fan is set to run uninterruptedly, it runs even when the system is not working to produce heat. Outside of a heating cycle, the furnace could be gusting cold air because of a setting mistake.
Go to your thermostat and take a look at the fan setting. Make sure the switch is set to AUTO, not ON. With the AUTO setting chosen, your heater should only run the fan during a heating cycle and not push cold air through your vents in between.
The fan setting controls the blower, the part that circulates air through your home, Setting it to ON means the blower will run 24/7—regardless of whether the furnace is heating the air or not, thus why you get cold air sometimes.
Thermostat Not Working
Since your thermostat connects, your home’s temperature needs to heater, if it isn’t working properly, your furnace could blow cold air because it isn’t unloading the right commands from your thermostat.
Replacing your thermostat safeguards accurate communication with your furnace to stop cold air issues. Have your thermostat swapped by your HVAC technician, and consider upgrading to a programmable or smart thermostat for better control over indoor relief and energy ingesting.
Check the furnace’s air filter
A dirty air filter delays air movement through the furnace. This increases temperatures inside the furnace, and the boundary switch closes heating cycles down if the unit develops too hot. If you have a dirty filter, swapping the filter characteristically stops cold air from blowing.
- Find the filter section on your furnace, eliminate its access door if applicable.
- Slide-out the old filter and arrange it.
- Supplement a new one of the same extent into the filter section. Make sure you follow the steering patterns noted on the filter frame for proper placing.
- Substitute access door to the compartment, if applicable.
Once the furnace cools down, it should resume. If it doesn’t, you may need HVAC repairs to reset the furnace’s limit switch.
Your furnace may be blowing cold air because the filter is too muddy.
A dirty air filter chunks airflow over the furnace’s heat exchanger, producing it to overheat. When overheating, your heater can trip a high limit switch, producing the furnace rings to shut off so that the heat exchanger does not crack.
Do this: Turn off your furnace at the thermostat, and check the heater filter. If it’s dirty, change it. You may need to call a technician to help you reset the furnace.
Standing Water around Unit
High-efficiency heaters harvest condensation, which usually exits the system through the condensate drain line. If there is an obstruction in the line, the system’s excess kill switch turns off the unit to avert water damage. Standing water around the furnace is a sign of a condensate line blockage.
Remove condensate drain clogs with these steps:
- Turn off power to the unit at the breaker.
- Locate the condensate drain pan – with a wet/dry vacuum, eliminate water that sits in the pan.
- Eliminate and clean the pan with mild dish soap and water, then substitute.
- Follow the condensate overflow that spreads from below the pan to its exit outside your home. Ascribe your wet/dry vacuum to the opening to suck out clogs.
- Restore power to the unit.
The pilot light is out
Older furnaces use an enduringly lit pilot light to explode the gas for the burner. If the pilot light goes out, your heater can’t heat any air.
The solution: Reawaken the pilot light. Instructions on your furnace should show you how to do this. If the pilot light retains going out, you have added an issue that a specialist needs to solve.
Side note: Old furnaces left-over tons of gas to keep the pilot flame lit. Consider promotion to a newer, well-organized furnace that does not use a pilot light or to a heat pump that uses electricity.
Overheated furnace
Your furnace heats air via a part of the furnace called the heat exchanger. A heat exchanger is a group of metal coils that are animated. When air blows over the coils, the air chooses that heat.
Sometimes, the heat exchanger can get too hot and scorch. Your system can intellect this overheating and will turn off the burners but preserve the blower (fan) on to help the heat exchanger cool down.
If this is your matter, you’ll notice cool air gusting from your openings in its place of heated air. You may also sign a sort of burning smell as well as a humming noise.
The solution: There is a variability of details that a heat exchanger can overheat, but characteristically anything that limits airflow over the heat exchanger can cause hotness. We would propose to check your air filter. If your air filter is blocked, it won’t pull in as much air as essential to keep the heat exchanger from overheating.
If your air filter appears like the one on the right, it’s time to substitute it.
However, if you swap your air filter and are still seeing cool air pending from your vents a few hours later, it’s time to call a specialist. An overheated heat exchanger is not somewhat you want to occur frequently, and a pro should be able to come to take a look at your system and regulate what the issue is.
No gas being supplied
Merely put, if there is no gas source to your heater, there will be no heat. Your furnace needs a reliable supply of gas to the burners to make heated air. But if the gas supply is off or weak, your pilot light won’t be able to light or stay lit, since you’ll have no heated air in your home.
The solution: First of all, guarantee that the gas valve is turned on (make sure the valve lever is parallel/in line with the gas supply pipe). If your gas is on and you still sense cold air pending from your vents, it’s time to call a pro.
