Has your furnace failed to turn on? Are you having a hard time making your furnace work? Do not stress out; your furnace ignitor may be playing pranks on you, and you need to call for a furnace repair without delay.
Modern furnace comes with an ignitor that lights the furnace and converts fuel into the heat needed to warm your home. However, if the ignitor is bad or broken, your furnace will not work as you wish. The following tips will let you know that your furnace ignitor is faulty so that you would contact a professional immediately for furnace repair.
Step 1: Turn Off the Furnace
The first step is to put your furnace at room temperature before testing the ignitor for likely damage. Turn off the furnace through its thermostat. Examine the ignitor for any visual or visible damage.
Step 2: Turn Off the Circuit Breaker
Look around the furnace for its circuit breaker. Check the home’s main breaker box for the furnace’s circuit breaker box. Switch it off to allow the furnace to cool off down to the room temperature. This is crucial to avoid getting injured by the hot temperature.
Step 3: Remove the Furnace Service Panel
Having allowed the furnace to cool off, now find the service panel of the furnace on its side. Unscrew and remove it to locate the ignitor. It is installed in a V-shaped bracket close to the gas port. The ignitor is easy to identify with two wires attached to its back.
Step 4: Get the Ignitor Down
Remove the ignitor from its socket gently. Remove the wires on its back from their socket in the furnace. Look critically at the ignitor for signs of damages. The signs of damage to look for include warped, cracked, broken, or chipped signs. If the ignitor seems to be in good physical condition, move to the next step.
Step 5: Test with a Multimeter
The fact that the ignitor does not have any scratches or visible signs of damage does not guarantee it to be in perfect working condition.
Get a multimeter and set it to the lowest resistance test. Put the multimeter’s probes on the tips of the ignitor’s plug. If the multimeter stays at zero or shows infinity, the ignitor has gone bad and cannot work any longer. You should replace it as soon as possible.
If you are not tech-savvy, call a professional for furnace repair and have your ignitor tested first before going any further. Get your furnace to the best working condition for your comfort in the house.