H.V.A.C. Quit

Heating and Air Conditioning repairs

Our furnace started clanging and banging! When I went to shut it off I had to walk past a vent. This is when I noticed that the air flow had stopped. A furnace is basically just a heat source(electric or gas), a way to distribute the heat(fan), and a control mechanism(thermostat). The clanging sound I heard was the blower fan coming apart. A piece of insulation had come off of the inside of the furnace and had gotten sucked up into the inside of the squirrel cage fan. This created an out of balance situation, and the blower wheel just tore itself loose from the hub connector which held it to the motor shaft, as you can see in the photo to the right(the little round metal piece is supposed to be welded in the hole in the center of this fan).

I checked around locally and had no luck whatsoever finding an in stock blower wheel. One person even explained to me that the only way to order a blower wheel was for someone to come out and look at the unit. I was very unhappy with this response since I was standing there with the actual part in my hand. My opinion is that if I hand you the part and you still cannot identify the part, then I must find another source for that part. I went to the internet, and after about seven or eight stops I hit upon INDIANA FAN. This company provided me with an easy to understand set of directions on how to order the right part. This site was the easiest to use, least expensive, and offered several delivery options. The weather is turning warmer here so I chose the slower(cheaper) delivery method(ground). Ordered the fan late monday night and now have the correct part in my hand(Thursday 10 a.m.), and this fix it myself approach will save me about $200.00(minimum). The actual skills needed to perform this particular repair are quite basic(if you can replace a door knob, you can do this), all you have to do is to follow a few basic rules.

1. TURN THE POWER OFF
2. remember how to put it back together
   • take a minute to make a drawing or snap a couple of photographs
3. REMEMBER RULE #1

Here is how we did our repair

Remember that our problem was that the blower quit working(no air comeing out of vents)

Remove both side panels from H.V.A.C. unit so that you can visually inspect unit for any abnormalities(shiny spots on dirty or rusty metal). Anything that is not an electrical problem will probably be easy to identify if you will just take the time to give the unit a good visual inspection. If you do not see it right away, then go ahead and look again. If the unit has quit working then you should see some evidence of a problem. If you cannot see any evidence of physical damage then you should try to move the fan by hand. If the fan spins freely when you touch it and there is no evidence of any mechanical damage then perhaps you have an electrical problem. We do not encourage people to mess with electricity, but if you are going to do it anyway you should check out our page on electrical repairs.

When we opened up our unit we could plainly see a super shiny spot on the center of the blower fan(see picture to the right). Any shiney or discolored spot is an indication of some sort of a problem. This shiney spot was the result of an out of balance situation which was caused by a piece of insulation being sucked up into the fan and becoming lodged there. This caused the fan to vibrate enough to break the weld holding it to the locking collar.

It only took a few minutes to unplug the leads to the fan motor and remove the six or eight screws that held the fan assembly to the housing. We then loosened up the one bolt that held(used to hold) the blower wheel on the shaft. We then removed the old fan and collar and replaced it with the new fan. All of the electrical connections on our little project were plug-in type so we did not have to crimp or solder anything. Unless you have a very old system your system will also have plug-in connectors. We then reassembled the unit. The entire operation took less than one hour and saved us about $200.00.

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