I had/solved an issue with my gas heater over the last month that I thought I would share in case it saves some homeowners out there some money. Here's an album outlining the different components of this fix.I knew there was a problem, because the heater would cut off after a few hours of use, which was an issue because we'd come home to a freezing house every day. As I learned, there's condensation created during combustion in a gas furnace, and that water needs to go somewhere. In many homes, this has to be pumped outside the house using a condensate pump. If the water can't get pumped out, a float switch triggers and the furnace is shut off. Reasons why the water might not be successfully or rapidly removed from the collection reservoir:Pump is broken/clogged/friedHose is clogged with algae or debrisOutput from hose is frozen (in cold climates this can be an issue)Check valve leaving the pump is cloggedThe pump was making noise and pushing water around inside the reservoir, so I suspected it wasn't the culprit.Output hose wasn't frozen because North Carolina.To clean the interior of the hose out I hooked up a shopvac to the output and dunked the hose at the pump side into a bucket of water and sucked about 5 gallons through it. The first gallons were very algae loaded, but then it came through clear. Still no output from the pump though.So I took the check valve out next...and couldn't blow through it in either direction. Compressed air could be blasted through it, but I think the ball in there was just gunked up with mineral deposits and algae and took an extremely high amount of pressure to move it. I threw it in an ultrasonic cleaner for a while to try to remove some of the gunk, but no luck - still no way to easily blow through the valve.So I bought one on Amazon for 10 bucks and it fixed the problem (last picture in the album).Lots of online videos and resources were telling me to replace the pump, which can be 50-100 bucks, and the sneaky thing is that those pumps come with a new check valve so the problem would have been fixed if I had, but the real culprit would have never been discovered.Anyway, hope that helps one or more of you out there save some money. via /r/DIY http://ift.tt/2kXzdEv
