Can you disable a furnace?

[HornedToad]

What would be the easiest & safest way to disable a propane furnance and leave the propane on to run the water heater?

Disconnect the thermostat? Disconnect the 12v power to the fan? Is there a valve in the furnance to shut off the propane?

 

[jnbhobe]

Re: Can you disable a furnance?

Turn off the thermostat

 

[cookie]

Re: Can you disable a furnance?

Your thermostat should have an on/off switch. Turn it off.
Why would you want to disable it?

Peace
Dave

 

[danemayer]

Re: Can you disable a furnance?

There are wires going to the gas valve. If one lead is disconnect and taped, the gas valve will never open. If someone turns on the thermostat, there'll be 3 failed attempts to ignite and the thermostat will go into safety lockout.

 

[HornedToad]

Re: Can you disable a furnance?

I am helping a homeless ministry maintain an old RV they purchased to move a street citizen from the hospital. They have him set up in an RV Park with power and a ceramic disk heater. Even though he has agreed to depend on the heater he is burning through over 40lbs of propane a week so he must be running the furnace.

I suggest we disable the furnace to eliminate this unnecessary expense and frequent trips to refill the bottles and they ask me to make it so. The water heater is gas only or we wouldn't have any propane hooked up. The thermostat is an old analog style with a slider on top and if it has a switch it could be switched back.
The furnace is a small Suburban under the sink with no floor registers.

My main concern is the SAFEST way??? Is that disconnecting one of the wires to the valve?



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[danemayer]

Re: Can you disable a furnance?

My main concern is the SAFEST way??? Is that disconnecting one of the wires to the valve?

There are several safe ways to disable: 1) disable the gas valve by disconnecting one lead (tape it so there are no shorts), 2) disable the thermostat by removing a wire or just remove the thermostat completely and tape the wires, 3) remove the fuse that powers the furnace (or replace it with a blown fuse), 4) disconnect and cap the gas line to the furnace.

Any of these approaches will prevent the furnace from starting without introducing any safety issues apart from tampering in an attempt to restore operation. The question that's left is whether the resident will attempt to fix the problem. If not, removing the fuse may be easiest.

A variant of the wire disconnects would be to add a hidden switch inline on one of the wires. A switch inside the wall behind the thermostat would disable the thermostat operation preventing use of the furnace unless someone knowing about the switch restored operation.

 

[HornedToad]

Thanks for outlining all the different options Dan.

In this situation I think my best bet is to remove the thermostat entirely. That way I'm not tampering with the furnace and down the road it should be pretty obvious to anyone else what it would take to put it back in service.


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[Lou_and_Bette]

No propane stove in the unit? If there is one, it may be used to supplement the heat. What do you do now?

 

[JohnD]

Get one of these from Walmart:



https://www.walmart.com/ip/Oil-Filled-Heater/53017084

I bought one for our Prowler and it does a great job of taking the chill off in the big livingroom/kitchen area, and keeps the upstairs bedroom and bathroom toasty without running the furnace.

 

[jbeletti]

No propane stove in the unit? If there is one, it may be used to supplement the heat. What do you do now?

In this situation - perhaps it would be best to remove the propane tanks and provide an induction cooktop.

 

[JohnD]

In this situation - perhaps it would be best to remove the propane tanks and provide an induction cooktop.

Unless this RV has a gas-only water heater.

 

[Lynn1130]

Is it being burned or is it leaking away?

 

[HornedToad]

I hope there is not a leak, I need to check that out. Maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt, but I think when he goes outside to smoke the trailer loses heat and the ceramic heater has a long recovery time so he blast the furnace???

The only reason the propane is hooked up is to run the gas only water heater. There is a propane cook top, but I don't think it's used much as they bring him most of his meals and he also has a microwave and coffee pot.

I researched swapping out the water heater with a gas / electric version for $350 and ran across this conversion kit for $100...
http://www.campingworld.com/browse/...liateid=5193&gclid=CMbu3t3tntACFRCRaQodr8wEog

Has anyone tried a WH conversion kit???

If I can get the water heater converted to electric and add a portable induction cook top, then I can let the propane tanks run out and not need to refill them or make any modifications to the furnace.

 

[Lou_and_Bette]

In this situation - perhaps it would be best to remove the propane tanks and provide an induction cooktop.

wasn't worried about cooking, only using the stove for heat, which it wasn't intended for and becomes a huge fire hazard.

- - - Updated - - -

I
If I can get the water heater converted to electric and add a portable induction cook top, then I can let the propane tanks run out and not need to refill them or make any modifications to the furnace.

May be the cheapest, and safest, way to resolve the issue.

 

[Lynn1130]

wasn't worried about cooking, only using the stove for heat, which it wasn't intended for and becomes a huge fire hazard.

Not to mention CO. (Not CO2.)

 

[justafordguy]

I installed the electric conversion kit in the water heater on our last TT. It was an easy install. The heating element just replaces the drain plug. You will have to have an electric supply line and a switch to turn it on and off. Mine was next to the fridge so that compartment already had an AC outlet, I just had to run the wires inside for the switch I mounted in the side of a kitchen cabinet.