3 Repairs Your Furnace Might Need If It's Noisy
Posted on: 1 November 2022
Furnaces often become louder as they get older. It's common for homeowners to hear their older furnaces making noise and just shrug it off, perhaps with a comment like "well, that's how old furnaces are." But the thing is, the specific issues that cause older furnaces to be loud are usually quite easy for an HVAC contractor to repair. Here's a look at three possible explanations for the noise and how they can be fixed.
A Cracked Heat Exchanger
The heat exchanger is the part of the furnace that surrounds the flame. It heats up and passes that heat on to the air that is pulled through the furnace and pushed out into your home. Heat exchangers can crack, sometimes due to the way a furnace is installed, and other times due to normal age and wear. When this happens, you may start to hear loud booms or bangs when the furnace turns on. This is the sound of the metal heat exchanger expanding and contracting around the crack.
Furnace contractors can replace a heat exchanger. In fact, if you suspect your heat exchanger may be cracked, it's really important to have this repair made since broken heat exchangers can lead to dangerous carbon monoxide leaks.
A Worn Ball Bearing
Furnace motors, like other motors, rely on ball bearings to allow moving parts to slide over one another with less friction or no friction. In other words, these ball bearings take the brunt of things to protect the other furnace parts. Eventually, those ball bearings may become uneven and jagged. At this stage, the furnace may start making a grinding noise or a scraping noise when the blower is on.
Replacing ball bearings is a fairly minor repair. Having an HVAC contractor make this repair will prevent future wear and damage to other parts of the HVAC equipment.
A Fraying Belt
The belt in the furnace motor is another part that suffers quite a lot of wear as time goes on. Eventually, this belt can begin to fray. This is an easy issue to ignore since your furnace will still blow out warm air and keep working in spite of the fraying belt. But squealing and squeaking during operation often mean that you have this problem. A furnace repair contractor can replace the belt, often without having to replace the whole motor. It's best to do this before the belt breaks completely, leaving you without heat.
Furnaces often do get noisy when they're old, but that's because they require repairs. Contact a heating company if your furnace is loud.
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