Enlightenment amidst faulty engineering philosophy

Today's story is about Furnaces...

My last biz trip was to Canada... started off with a flight to Toronto via Detroit.  Landed, and got a message that the furnace at home was down.

For the next nine days, I instructed my wife and son on how to 'limp' it through... and when I got home, it was clear that the furnace wasn't gonna recover... couldn't tell exactly why at the time, but all the functions seemed appropriate, but the fire was 'backing up' into the burner box, rather than going into the heat exchanger like it should.

While sitting in my hotel room, I found a new-old-stock furnace on Craigslist, and ordered a propane conversion kit.  Within a few hours of hitting the ground, I had the furnace in back of my truck, to the company shop, and made a steel frame stand to mount it on my basement floor... stand-alone... no ductwork.  I had my propane line transfered to it, exhaust piped out the wall (PVC), and warming the house up within a day... and good thing too...

Most of our flowers had wilted and dropped their leaves.  CO monitors never went off, and nobody passed out, but the nitric acid was very noticeable.  Two weeks later, they're coming back okay.

The old furnace looked perfectly fine everywhere, but between the upper and lower half of heat exchanger is a basically permanent cover (can't be accessed without totally evicerating the furnace) that I took off, and found it heavy full of a brown dirt...  it'd still flow exhaust, but not damned much.

The brown dirt... well, we live in the country, along a gravel road, surrounded by corn fields... and the furnace gets it's combustion air from a PVC pipe out the north side wall... where one of her flower gardens is (they're everywhere)... well treated with fluffly brown compost every spring.

So... the furnace sucked in dust from fields, roads, and the flower garden.

I'm in process of new furnace ductwork and total plan (it needed some re-engineering anyway), and the NEW setup will NOT be drawing air from outside...
It'll get it from the basement... where the older-type 'low efficiency' furnaces got their air.

and...

we need  BIGGER furnaces in our houses cause we've been told to replace incandescent bulbs with CFLs and LEDs....

Incandescent bulbs supplied a LOT of 'local' heat when reading  a book, newspaper or doing something that required having  a light on.

NOW, them new fangled 'have to have' bulbs DON'T generate 'local heat', so we have to bump up the stat higher and higher to keep warm while reading a book or newspaper

..

AND since we're using less electricity ,the hydro companies jack UP the rates, to compensate for the loss of profits cause we're using  less....

How are the politicians ever going to keep you in line???  Oh they can have Shameless bury your house in "pretty" so the smoke cannot escape the chimney your so covered.  But you probably have a piece of pipe squirreled away to just put it up higher.  So you escape again.

DJ... why can'tyou use one of them IR 'heat lamp' bulbs that are sold for chicken coops and such? They also keep your burger and fries hot while you pay !

Jay

Up here, 'way up North', according to Stan....haha, I've replaced most every bulb with T8s and LEDs.  Hydro company had a scam that my business qualified for. 5 years ago THEY replaced my T12 tubes with T8s and new ballasts, 2 years ago they replaced my old bulbs for LEDS ! All 23W, dimmable ones! About 2 weeks after the LED install, some 'magically' moved into my house.....

The problem we have here is everytime we reduce power consumption, they jack the rates up, so we..the consumers STILL pay $$$, the bill doesn't go DOWN...sigh...

rant over...

oh yeah 'smart' meters don't allow customers to 'load shed' anymore either...

Jay

Orange Blood wrote: My word Dave, maybe you should just give in and get on one or more of the many government programs that offer assistance.  I am sure there is one somewhere that gives out free furnaces every couple of years.  Then you can also get free medications to cure your thinking problems, all at little or no cost to you.

Heee heee... 

That's interesting, Louis...

I have not worked with TUBE replacements, especially not the 'troffer' type fixture replacements (like what you'd use in a kitchen or workshop fixture) but I have been studying the various replacements for CW-HO 60's used in our overhead sign applications.

MOST lights powered by AC will exhibit some amount of FLICKER, and you can visually detect it best when there's an older TV set, or a strobe light, or when taking a video or still picture with a digital camera.  it's strobing at line frequency.  Interesting thing here, is that your wife doesn't notice strobing with the FL lamps... but the strobing of an FL lamp is by far worse than just about any other illumination method.

MOST LEDs now run on DC.  There's a power supply which converts line AC to DC, and steps it down to lower voltage, where it feeds a string of LEDs.  The individual LEDs run on around 2.5v, so they connect 10 in series to get 25v, and feed them at the 25v level.  It's easy to tell when you've got this type of supply setup- when you turn off the switch, the light loses light quickly, but you'll still see a faint glow for a few seconds after they're off.

I suspect the flicker you got, has something to do with the lamp being powered in some 'other' way.  Do your replacements require changing out the florescent ballast?  If not, that's probably why.

I replaced our kitchen FL tube fixture with a complete LED dimmable fixture, and I checked it with a strobe... and it's perfect.  I put a dimming wall control on it because Ann said it was actually 'too bright'.  She was happy to see the FL fixture go... and when I took it out, she saw the burn mark around the ballast and knew that it wasn't long-for-the-world.

When I started my experimentation into LED lighting, she was INCREDIBLY resistant... (actually, worse).  I came up with the perfect test-plan:  If I could replace an incandescent or CFL WITHOUT her noticing, that meant it was good.

One thing people don't understand... is COLOR.  Color is important-  and high-efficiency lamps are high efficiency because they keep the light energy where you need it most- they don't generate infrared and ultraviolet.  Old lamps... especially incandescents... created a wide range of light frequencies, so it didn't cause anyone any serious problems... but LEDs are efficient because they don't waste energy sending out all the stuff outside our visual range.  Some people's eyes don't deal well with certain color ranges.  Fortunately, LEDS come in a fair range of color...  warm white is from 2600K up to 3800k or so, and cool white is from 3600 up to well... some can go to 6000k or so.  If you get a 'wrong' color range, it can make a person's eyes hurt.  My dining room is that way... the colors she chose for wall and ceiling don't LIKE a cool white, but a warm white isn't enough to make it look good.  I solved this by alternating two colors of lamp in the chandalier... half are in the 4k range, the other in the 5k.  Good mix.

There are 2 kinds of LEDs for replace FL lamps. 1 uses the existing ballast, the other you need to remove the ballast. Then there's the 'which' ballasts do you have " Old school 1.2" bulbs( orginals...)or the electronic balasts used to power T8 or 'skinny' FL lamps.

This is one area where you MUST read the instructions....

Jay

 Hey Tom,,I checked the lumber yard to see if they had some old incandescent ones but no dice. We ain't gots a Menards here but,,,,but,,, i'm way overdue to go visit Ms big Ones at TSC,,,maybe she'll give me a special deal on bout 4 of them "old, out of style" bulbs,,,,,

 

I wouldn't think stepped down AC only would do a very good job of firing an LED.  The duty cycle where it was the right polarity and magnitude would be less than 1/2 the time, and would flicker like crazy I'd think.....no juicetrician here, but that's how it reasons out in my mind.

re:

The imbaciles that believe iron-core transformers 'waste' energy, should be stripped of every accredation from high-school diploma up, for failure to pass 6th grade science.

gee Dave that's a tad harsh, but 100 % TRUE !

Ever since the 'space race', stuff has been getting smaller in order to increase profits, putting consumer coins into someone else's. One of the computers on my desk is the size of a USB drive,$20, sigh...

That being said, I did score some very pretty($$$) LED track or pendant style units last year. They are powered by a MASSIVE torroid transformer ,good for 20 amps! Has to be a 8" donut!! Dang heavy..a man's power supply ! Keep thinkng I should make a battery charger out of it,then I look at the Made in China, smart charger ,size of a DVM that only cost me $15.

Jay