Hi all,
New member and first posting.
I came across this site by Googling about the PSG Caddy furnace.
I have a question or two for those knowledgeable about these furnaces.
My daughter has a add-on Caddy wood furnace and has been using it for a bit over 4 years without problems.
This year however she started to complain about an occasional smell of smoke. My son-in-law and I did a complete inspection of the flue, chimney and barometric damper and found everything to be normal. He had done a complete cleaning about a month prior to this incident.
About a week ago my daughter called to say that the CO alarm went off near the furnace room, I had her and her newborn son leave the house and I came over to inspect (suspecting need for a battery change). I checked the CO level and found no problems, the CO alarm battery was okay so I was left scratching my head. I installed a new CO monitor and chalked it up to a bad CO monitor.
I won't go into details but that evening there were other potentially life threatening problems. The furnace was shut down and a detailed inspection ensued.
What we found was a crack of the weld in the steel (sheet metal) plate at the base of the internal flue pipe. The specific location is as follows: If you open the cleaning door there are 3 tubes the left and right ones exhaust the gases from the fire box. These gases the go through the center tube out the flue. The crack is at the base of the center tube and what's bothering me is, first of all the metal here is about 1/16" (16 gauge) and secondly when we turned on the blower motor air was coming out of this crack.
So in other words, exhaust gases were free to enter the plenum area when the blower motor wasn't running, and when the blower motor was running fresh air was forced into the exhaust gases (secondary combustion in the flue pipe?).
Communicated all of this to PSG and they will pay to have this re-welded, stating that it's covered under warranty, so in this respect they have done well by us.
I however am still concerned as I don't understand why there is only 16 gauge steel between the "fire box" and the fresh air plenum.
Can anyone explain the design of these units or if someone had similar problems. Is this something that we should be concerned with from a health and safety point of view? Will re-welding really fix the problem.
The model of this Caddy I believe is PF 1000.
Thanks,
-Hank
New member and first posting.
I came across this site by Googling about the PSG Caddy furnace.
I have a question or two for those knowledgeable about these furnaces.
My daughter has a add-on Caddy wood furnace and has been using it for a bit over 4 years without problems.
This year however she started to complain about an occasional smell of smoke. My son-in-law and I did a complete inspection of the flue, chimney and barometric damper and found everything to be normal. He had done a complete cleaning about a month prior to this incident.
About a week ago my daughter called to say that the CO alarm went off near the furnace room, I had her and her newborn son leave the house and I came over to inspect (suspecting need for a battery change). I checked the CO level and found no problems, the CO alarm battery was okay so I was left scratching my head. I installed a new CO monitor and chalked it up to a bad CO monitor.
I won't go into details but that evening there were other potentially life threatening problems. The furnace was shut down and a detailed inspection ensued.
What we found was a crack of the weld in the steel (sheet metal) plate at the base of the internal flue pipe. The specific location is as follows: If you open the cleaning door there are 3 tubes the left and right ones exhaust the gases from the fire box. These gases the go through the center tube out the flue. The crack is at the base of the center tube and what's bothering me is, first of all the metal here is about 1/16" (16 gauge) and secondly when we turned on the blower motor air was coming out of this crack.
So in other words, exhaust gases were free to enter the plenum area when the blower motor wasn't running, and when the blower motor was running fresh air was forced into the exhaust gases (secondary combustion in the flue pipe?).
Communicated all of this to PSG and they will pay to have this re-welded, stating that it's covered under warranty, so in this respect they have done well by us.
I however am still concerned as I don't understand why there is only 16 gauge steel between the "fire box" and the fresh air plenum.
Can anyone explain the design of these units or if someone had similar problems. Is this something that we should be concerned with from a health and safety point of view? Will re-welding really fix the problem.
The model of this Caddy I believe is PF 1000.
Thanks,
-Hank
