Electric furnace problems

Factual Questions
1

I went out of town 3 days ago, and when I left I turned the furnace thermostat down so that it wouldn’t run while I was gone. I’m in Palm Springs, and it does get cool and occasionally cold at night, so a furnace is an important thing. This particular furnace is about 25 years old, good old electric forced air type.

When I got home last night, I turned the thermostat up so that the furnace would come on. After about 15 minutes of continuous running, I noticed that it wasn’t blowing warm air :smack:. In fact, when I tried to turn it to the “Off” position to get it to recycle, it kept blowing air, not hot or cold, just air. I couldn’t get it to turn off and it ran and ran until finally I unplugged the unit (it’s in a closet area inside the hallway). I left in unplugged overnight, then plugged it in this AM and it immediately started blowing air in the “Off” position.

I have a service call out to my home warranty people. The HVAC people are going to call me in the AM, and I would love to know ahead of time if this is a potentially big problem or a “spare parts” thing. I did a search on the computer for furnace troubleshooting, but I can’t find this particular problem.

Anyone have this happen, or maybe there’s an HVAC person out there reading this?

2

Is this like a big space heater, and separate from the air conditioning? Is it a forced-air gas furnace? Or, do you have a heat pump system?

Whatever it is, without knowing exactly what’s in that closet, we’ll have a hard time of guessing. Probably the best thing is to just wait for the HVAC tech to show up.

3

It is separate from the AC. It’s an electric forced air system. We call it central heating/cooling down here, because the fan system also works when you run the AC. The only name I can find on it is “Night and Day”, which is probably just the name of the system and not the manufacturer. It’s just so weird that it runs and runs when I turn it from “Heat” to “Off”.

I’m still waiting for a call. Thanks for your reply.

4

Some possabilities: the circuit board that controls the furnace. Bad relay, blown track, something along those lines. Common, especially when switching from one mode to another.

Also, the heating elements may have given up and ‘opened’.

I just went through this and repaired my board. It was the heating relay.