Gas Furnace Troubles


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Old 12-26-09, 08:36 AM
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Gas Furnace Troubles

Apologies in advance if I'm asking about the wrong things here. I'm not incredibly knowledgeable about furnaces to begin with. What I have in my basement might be considered a boiler instead of a furnace.

I rent a downstairs apartment. It has gas heat mostly, but in one room only there's electric heat. The landlord says it was like that when they bought the property. My problem is with the gas heat though.

When I moved in, the landlord assured me they had recently replaced the furnace and that it was brand new. Everything went fine for almost a year. Then, the supposedly new furnace stopped working.

I called the landlord who came over and replaced the furnace with a new one. No explanation was given as to what was wrong with the old one.

A couple of weeks later, I woke up to the smell of gas in my house. I called the gas company and they came out to find a ton of water in the basement and the furnace was water logged.

This is what the gas company guy told me. He could've told me anything and I would've just nodded as I know nothing about furnaces as I said. Apparently the landlord left something off of the new furnace that regulated the water pressure in it. This caused the pressure to build and eventually a valve blew off the furnace and created a hole that gas began leaking out of. Also, the water got into some components on the furnace which damaged them.

The gas company red tagged the furnace and shut the gas off to my house. I called my landlord and told him what had transpired. I was not happy about it at all and he said he'd be out to take care of it.

It took him about a day of messing around with it, but he supposedly got it fixed and left saying everything should be fine. At five the next morning I woke up to the smell of gas in my house again.

I called the gas company and my landlord and told them I wanted it fixed asap and that I wanted the gas company themselves to tell me it was safe. A couple of hours later everything was good. Apparently there was an improperly fitted pipe or something that was leaking this time. The gas company signed off on it and left.

It's been a couple of days since all of this happened and now my normally quiet heaters constantly sound like there's rushing water going through them when the heat comes on. This has never happened before.

It's loud, and I'm wondering what's causing it. Is this normal? If not, what can I do to make it run more quietly? Should I even mess with it or is this something my landlord should handle? Is there any chance that this is dangerous? It doesn't seem likely, but given my landlord's track record with this furnace I'm obviously worried.
 
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Old 12-26-09, 09:02 AM
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In my opinion as a (now retired) furnace/boiler repairman and landlord, it's usually a mistake for tenants to get in between the furnace and the landlord's responsibility to make it work.

Do that, and often it invites finger pointing with different people saying someone else is to blame for the problem. You don't want to be the person with a finger pointed at you.

So I'd start with phone calls to the landlord emphasizing the current problems. Were I a landlord, I would not want a situation where water is running through the equipment to go uninvestigated.

He may well have found it difficult to get help over the holiday, but this is now the day after the holiday.

If he fails to act promptly and effectively, the landlord may have breeched the lease, leaving you free to move into a new place, of which there may be many (judging from my difficulties re renting a place of mine).
 
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Old 12-26-09, 09:12 AM
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I plan on moving out as soon as I get my tax return. I'm tired of this place as this guy moves very slowly to fix things or doesn't fix them at all.

I just want to make sure I don't have a serious safety issue in the meantime.

I should mention that I have baseboard heaters, and that according to what I've read on the internet, this water rushing noise coming out of them can be caused by air in the gas lines leading to the heaters. Does that sound right? If so is that a safety problem?
 
 

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