There must be some of these old furnaces around down south that don't get used much. So nice to see how they made them back then.
1957 furnace gets it's first service call in 2024.
- Thread starter Mainia
- Start date
Fascinating. I have a 1989 installed Bryant that is still operating well and passes safety inspections.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2011
- Messages
- 5,436
My grandfather had a similar unit from the 60's in his house. It remained in service until about 2012 when he passed and the house was sold.
My 2-story detached 2k sq ft home built in 1976 that I bought in '99 has the original Lennox 96k btu 4-burner furnace, natural draft. I think I changed the fan motor once, but I've never called in for service (not that I would, I'd fix it myself). These furnaces are not much more complicated than a bar-b-que. And the fan motors are not those krazy expensive ECM units that are succeptible to power-line transients.
I've adjusted the gas valve to get a very low flame to increase the duty cycle (ie reduce cycling) and keep a more even temp in the house, but still have good flame roll-out. The heat these things can put out are way more than the house needs at full gas flow even on cold winter nights (-10 to 0 F).
Yea, natural gas is cheap, your payback on a hi-efficiency furnace will take years, and the sensor/electronics breakdowns are going to happen. Same with tankless water heater. In the winter our incoming water temp is very cold, and the standby heat of my nat-gas direct-vent water tank is just radiating into my house anyways. My gas water tank requires no electricity to operate. In a power outage I'll still have hot water.
I've adjusted the gas valve to get a very low flame to increase the duty cycle (ie reduce cycling) and keep a more even temp in the house, but still have good flame roll-out. The heat these things can put out are way more than the house needs at full gas flow even on cold winter nights (-10 to 0 F).
Yea, natural gas is cheap, your payback on a hi-efficiency furnace will take years, and the sensor/electronics breakdowns are going to happen. Same with tankless water heater. In the winter our incoming water temp is very cold, and the standby heat of my nat-gas direct-vent water tank is just radiating into my house anyways. My gas water tank requires no electricity to operate. In a power outage I'll still have hot water.
My house was built in the 1950's, and still has the original furnace. It's a wall furnace, common in So Calif., back in the day. Had a Heating guy come out to check it out a couple years back, and he gave a big thumbs up. Said, "that's a good unit".
So this furnace didn't originally have a blower? Air just passively moved through the system? Technically not a forced-air system? I didn't know such beasts existed.
I didn't watch the video but even older furnaces were called "gravity", I didn't know that heat rising was considered gravity, but that's what they're called. At our old house, a neighbor still had one but it did finally get to the point of a) being terribly inefficient (their gas bill was 2-3x higher than ours in winter) and b) needed repairs that they ended up replacing it. It had to be dismantled with sledgehammers. The homes were built in the 1920s but I have no idea how old that furnace was. It appears they stopped being used by the 50s so it probably worked for 60 years if not longer.
I bought a house 15 years ago from the original owner house built in 1951. Had the original gas hot air Bryant furnace ran like a champ. Used it for about 5 years no service calls tuned it up myself every fall took a few minutes. Changed it out because it was in the middle of the basement and had a new one installed against the wall to open up space before I did a complete man cave renovation
