put in new tank 2 years ago, new furnance 2 months ago. had problems and guy drained off 5 gal of water, debris from tank. Since I was almost out of fuel, I decided to completely let it run out and then clean it. I let it run almost completely dry, then disconnected line and put temp line from valve and drained rest out into buckets. The valve is on the underside of tank and When I look in tank, the valve looks like it draws from very bottom. There doesn't appear to be extension tube so that it doesn't suck any of the sludge from bottom of tank. my old one had valve hole on side about 2" from bottom. Shouldn't there be something in there to prevent furnace from drawing fuel from the very bottom of tank? going to remove valve and see if maybe i could sweat a little piece on it? Do you think I should do something so that I don't draw in sludge/debris from bottom of tank?

We built a new townhouse in 2006, and moved in on March of that year. During the winter of the first year we lived there, we noticed one time that the thermostat was set at 70, but it was 68 and the house, and the furnace wasn’t running. I went down and opened the service panel to check it out, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. When I put the service panel back on, the furnace fired right up. Since it seemed to be a one-time incident, I chalked it up to “a new furnace breaking in”, and I never mentioned it at our 1-year new home warranty walk through. Last winter, I think this may have happened once or twice, but this winter, we seem to be having a lot more issues. I finally realized that by opening the service panel, I was resetting the system. Earlier during this winter, I had to do this once ever 2 weeks or so. Then, I was starting to have to reset it at least once a week. Lately, I’ve had to reset the furnace at least once per day. This is especially annoying when I have to get up in the middle of the night to reset it. My question is what could be causing this? I’ve observed the furnace attempting to light, and it seems to have difficulty in that area. I hear a fan turn on, then I hear the gas start to flow, and then I see the “hot surface” ignition start to glow bright yellow. Usually, the furnace has to repeat this process 3 or 4 times before it eventually ignites. Once it attempts a 5th unsuccessful time, it shuts down until it is reset by opening the service panel. I know that gas is flowing because I can smell it after several unsuccessful attempts by the furnace. In fact, the blower motor runs for a few seconds between each attempt, I would assume to remove built-up gas. It just seems that a 3 year old furnace should not be having issues like this. Any thoughts on the issue would be greatly appreciated. If it helps, here is some information pertaining to my furnace… Comfortmaker - N8MPN100F14B1 100,000 BTU Input Manufactured 10/2005 Thanks in advance... Dave