Furnace Issues

[Cormacs]

Hey everyone. I got a strange issue that may just be paranoia. It's been getting cold out so I have had the furnace on but lately it's been giving me issues. I keep getting errors from the furnace causing it not to function. It's a new high end York modulating furnace that has no insteon control yet. The furnace tech has been out twice now since it obviously has warranty only being a little over a year old. Now since it has not been fixed yet I have started to research the issue myself. I get an error code "unexpected gas flow" so when I did my own poking apparently the furnace uses the flame sensor to diagnose this problem. If the flame sensor is on fire it produces a DC voltages and induces it into the ground of the furnace which is then picked up by the control board...

 

My question is can the insteon traffic in the house somehow be interfering with this communication inside the furnace? The furnace guy is coming out again today and I'm sure if it is insteon interference it would baffle him.

 

 

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[paulbates]

Insteon powerline signals are orders of magnitude less powerful than AC current powering the furnace. 

 

That sounds like an onboard, internal furnace problem or sensor wiring problem.  If you found specific web links about this problem, I would research those well and mention them.

 

Since there is precedent for the problem you are having online without insteon, I would suggest not bringing it up, it will turn into an investigative rat hole.

[larryllix]

Not likely Insteon RF signals would affect the millivolt wiring in a furnace otherwise every cell phone, radio station, and WiFi router signal would disrupt it also.

 

The powerline communications are done .across the live to neutral on the household grid and should be received everywhere in the house. The power supply inside the furnace is usually and mostly 24vac to run coil based relays. Any sensitive electronic circuits have filtered power supplies that should remove any minute signals from the smoothed dc power.

 

Having said that nothing is concrete but signals bothering another piece of equipment indicates a poorly designed, or defective piece of equipment. If the minute Insteon signals bother other equipment they have no business being in a household environment out in the real world.

[larryllix]

Insteon powerline signals are orders of magnitude less powerful than AC current powering the furnace. 

 

That sounds like an onboard, internal furnace problem or sensor wiring problem.  If you found specific web links about this problem, I would research those well and mention them.

 

Since there is precedent for the problem you are having online without insteon, I would suggest not bringing it up, it will turn into an investigative rat hole.

Good point!

 

Don't give them any ammunition to blame a problem on something in your side of the court. It gives them an opportunity to walk away until you do something and then you are on the hook. Keep the ball on their side of the court.

[Cormacs]

I would never mention it. It only got me thinking about it after I read that the flame sensor uses a chassis ground to communicate with the board and it's not actually a switch it's a voltage generating sensor so the voltages from it I would imagine would be minute as well. Since the sensor uses a chassis ground it would be grounded to the house grounding which is bonded to the neutral. I know it's a round about way to receive interference but to me wouldn't be outside the realm of possibilities. I was doing reading on this issue with York and apparently one of the possible causes is noisy electricity.

 

On a side note speaking of insteon interference. I have a pellet stove in the garage and I noticed with it when insteon traffic is present the blower reduces speed. I don't really care too much because traffic isn't often enough to cause an issue. I just thought I would mention it since we are on the topic.

 

 

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[Cormacs]

Here is the forum post that got me questioning my insteon network...

 

 

The board uses DC flame rectification. Google that. Basically the flame sensor is not a sensor but an electrode. AC volts flows to it and when there is a flame it goes thru the flame and converts to DC and runs thru the burner metal back to the board thru the metal of the furnace. The furnace is grounded. What Beenthere said is if you have a problem with your house wiring and there is voltage in the ground wire to the furnace it will sense that and think it is a flame signal and thinks the fire is stuck on because the gas valve is open. In reality it can also be the board giving a false error code. I am not a York tech and don't see many of them but it "appears" that may be a common problem if hvactech126 mentioned it and may be a York tech. Beenthere can tell you about the house wiring issue. Something to do with the panel or neutral.

 

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[paulbates]

On a side note speaking of insteon interference. I have a pellet stove in the garage and I noticed with it when insteon traffic is present the blower reduces speed. I don't really care too much because traffic isn't often enough to cause an issue. I just thought I would mention it since we are on the topic.

 

That's a completely new one for me. I've not heard of insteon signals causing motors to change speeds or any other non controlled effects. Sounds like there are things to look in to there but not sure where to start.

[Cormacs]

That's a completely new one for me. I've not heard of insteon signals causing motors to change speeds or any other non controlled effects. Sounds like there are things to look in to there but not sure where to start.

My pellet stove is a smart stove that adjusts the fan speed based on the fire pot temperature so I wasn't sure if maybe it's making the sensor fluctuate or something. Like I said it hasn't bothered me because the only time I have noticed it is when I turn the garage light on or off which is insteon controlled.

 

 

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[Teken]

Since the HVAC technician has been out at least twice what has he said that has been done or observed? What is the code for this issue, and has anyone measured if there is sufficient line voltage with respect to ground?

 

Dirty power is always a huge possibility depending upon where you live and the age of the power line. Keeping in mind dirty power from a real world perspective are harmonic frequencies outside of the 60 Hz bandwidth.

 

Keeping in mind most electronics are designed to operate with in a large area of tolerances. Its too bad you don't have any sort of data logger to see if the problem is isolated to time of day, dependent upon other auxiliary devices coming on, or power line issues such as sags, surge, freq drift, etc.

 

In my home I measure and monitor every aspect of my incoming, generated power as seen below. This system has been set up to pick up any variance on the line. This is obviously an extreme case of monitoring but it was done to validate key things for my project(s) and also to determine what level of resolution would be required for the other back up unit.

 

As there are two of these data loggers that track the power.

 

The system detects anything from freq drift, sags, lulls, surges, spikes, phase shift, and how many cycles the incident occurred. As noted none of what you see is out of band but typical of a normal operating system. 

 

 

 

The system can render if and when a deviation is in the safe range or out of band.

 

 

 

Here is a perfect example of a 131 volt surge well with in tolerances. Given how quickly they come and go as they do in any power line.

 

 

Just more charts to quantify the surges / sags for a *At a glance* view.

 

It goes with out saying you don't need a 15K Fluke data logger like I have on hand to give you information. But, its very helpful to help eliminate one aspect of the problem in the home etc.

 

[Cormacs]

Right now the furnace is dead. It isn't a time of day issue. It keeps coming up fault code 10 unexpected gas flow detected. It attempts to ignite 4 times and pauses for 4 hours and the cycle continues. It seems coincidental to start happening shortly after I installed an insteon wireless thermostat to control my bathroom fan. I noticed the thermostat creates a considerable amount of traffic with temperature and humidity swings. The furnace guy has been replacing parts so far and he will be back today.

 

In the end it could all be paranoia and something is wrong with the furnace and he just hasn't found it yet.

 

 

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[Teken]

Right now the furnace is dead. It isn't a time of day issue. It keeps coming up fault code 10 unexpected gas flow detected. It attempts to ignite 4 times and pauses for 4 hours and the cycle continues. It seems coincidental to start happening shortly after I installed an insteon wireless thermostat to control my bathroom fan. I noticed the thermostat creates a considerable amount of traffic with temperature and humidity swings. The furnace guy has been replacing parts so far and he will be back today.

 

In the end it could all be paranoia and something is wrong with the furnace and he just hasn't found it yet.

 

 

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Perhaps to ease your mind I would remove the Insteon TSTAT and see if the system comes back up, no? As noted by many others in the past there have been several models of Insteon TSTAT's that which had huge amounts of traffic caused by the older Venstar T1700 - 1900 Insteon Adaptor.

 

The fault wasn't with the Venstar TSTAT it was with the plugin module that allowed Insteon control and interaction. I haven't read too many complaints about large amounts of traffic from the new style units though?

[Cormacs]

It's not a huge amount of traffic but it took what was a dead insteon network that only made noise when I hit a switch to having random traffic a few times an hour. I plan on unplugging the tstat tonight if the furnace is still screwed up after he leaves.

 

 

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[Cormacs]

The furnace guy just left. He replaced the same sensor the first guy did then while he was packing up it quit again. So now he has ordered a gas valve that won't be here until tomorrow night. They don't work weekends so he said they will replace it on Monday.

 

 

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[Teken]

The furnace guy just left. He replaced the same sensor the first guy did then while he was packing up it quit again. So now he has ordered a gas valve that won't be here until tomorrow night. They don't work weekends so he said they will replace it on Monday.

 

 

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Unless the part is known to be iffy this is just another case of a *parts swapper*. I am not sure how some of these people get certified to be a technician but its clear to me there isn't a lot of actual *trouble shooting* and diagnostics.

 

Keep us all in the loop because I am interested in the outcome. Let us know how you get on with that TSTAT swap and (IF) it does anything for you.

[Cormacs]

They replaced the "gas valve" today. Crossing my fingers. It's not very cold out right now so it isn't cycling much. Time will tell.

 

 

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[larryllix]

Hope that's it!