**Preventative Maintenance: Cleaning and Inspecting a Gas Furnace**

When it comes to maintaining your home's systems, preventative maintenance is key to ensuring everything runs smoothly and efficiently. One crucial aspect of this is cleaning and inspecting your gas furnace. In this article, we'll take you through the process of cleaning a gas furnace and provide valuable tips on how to do it safely and effectively.

**Cleaning a Gas Furnace**

The first step in cleaning a gas furnace is to identify any visible issues with the unit. In the case of the video we're featuring today, the homeowner had noticed some charring and carbon buildup on one of the sensors. This was causing the sensor to malfunction, which could have led to the entire system shutting down. To address this issue, we set out to clean the furnace.

To avoid damaging the outer surface of the sensor, we used a fine-grade steel wool (40 grade) to gently remove any debris or char that had built up on it. The key is to be careful and not apply too much pressure, which could scratch or damage the sensor. We also wanted to shine up the surface as much as possible without getting rid of all the grime – we didn't need to get the furnace completely clean, just enough to remove any chunks of Char that were obstructing the sensor's ability to detect heat.

**The Importance of Safety Precautions**

When working with electrical and gas systems, safety is paramount. To avoid injury or damage, it's essential to wear protective gear, including gloves, safety glasses, and a face mask. We also made sure to unplug the furnace from the power source before beginning our cleaning process. This not only prevents accidental startups but also ensures that we're working with a safe and stable system.

**The Cleaning Process**

With our steel wool in hand, we began gently scrubbing away at the charred areas on the sensor. We were careful to work slowly and methodically, making sure not to apply too much pressure or rub too hard. The goal was to remove any visible debris without damaging the surface of the sensor.

As we cleaned, we also took a moment to inspect the furnace's exterior for any other signs of damage or wear. This included checking the screws and connections to ensure they were secure and not loose. We also wanted to make sure that all moving parts were properly aligned and functioning smoothly – any issues here could lead to reduced efficiency and increased energy bills.

**Putting it All Back Together**

Once we had cleaned and inspected the furnace, we moved on to putting everything back together. This included reattaching the cover and screws, and ensuring that the connections were secure and not loose. We also made sure to plug the furnace back in and test it to make sure it was working properly.

**Testing and Quality Control**

Before moving on to other tasks or projects, we wanted to ensure that our cleaning and inspection process had been successful. To do this, we tested the furnace to make sure it was heating up properly and running smoothly. If everything seemed okay, we moved on – but if not, we would have known exactly where to go back to and make adjustments as needed.

**Spare Parts and Prevention**

Finally, we took a moment to talk about the importance of having spare parts on hand when it comes to your gas furnace. With the cost of replacement parts not too high (we estimate they're around $30 or less), it's wise to have a backup plan in case something goes wrong. This way, you won't be left scrambling for repairs or replacements when you need them most – especially if you're already facing harsh winter weather conditions.

**Additional Resources**

If you're interested in learning more about gas furnace maintenance and repair, we recommend checking out our YouTube channel for a wealth of tutorials, tips, and advice. We also have articles and links on our website (house-improvements.com) that cover everything from basic maintenance to advanced repairs. And if you'd like to stay up-to-date on our latest content and projects, be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi I'm Shannon from H improvements.com today I want to show you how to clean your furnace flame sensor flame sensor is a fairly simple looking little piece of equipment um you don't want to touch this this rod end so that's why I'm being careful with it basically it has a wire connector area on the one end it's going to have a plate here with a bolt or maybe even two screws through it to hold it into the furnace and then it's got this porcelain piece in here and then this Long Rod basically what this does is as your furnace uh uh gas valve turns on allows gas to come in your igniter ignites that gas and it starts to Flame and burn for a few seconds this sensor here is sensing whether there's a a good flame there whether there is a flame at all or whether the valve is just allowing gas to to uh spew into your house this sensor doesn't sense that there's a flame there or the heat there I guess uh what it does is shut your furnace down so what your furnace would do then and a and a symptom you might find is that uh you can hear your furnace cycling you know two or three times in a row where it'll it'll light and uh you can hear the fan and everything turn on and it'll burn for a few minutes and then shut itself down not even a few minutes maybe 1 minute and it shuts itself down and then maybe 2 3 minutes later it'll do the same thing and it might different furnaces are a little different but it might do that three or four times in a row and if that sensor is sensing there isn't a flame there after that two or three times that it tries to do it it actually will shut your furnace down usually for a period of time uh maybe up to an hour or two hours before it tries that cycle again and it's a safety measure just to be sure that you are igniting the gas and it isn't just uh spewing into your house so um the uh the common problem is though that these sensors get dirty and they don't properly sense that there is a flame there even though it's there and they'll shut your furnace down because they don't don't think that it's there so so they need some periodic cleaning I'd recommend uh probably beginning of every season or the end of every season whichever way you want to do it um just try to remember to do it so what you want to do is uh take the main cover off the front of your furnace and uh before this what we did was actually turned the furnace the power off get this behind me here we turned the actual power off to the furnace to be sure that uh it won't cut in on us um now we need to locate our uh our sensor if you look up on this now every furnace is going to be a little bit different sometimes they're right down here near the burners uh this one happens to be up top where the these burners are you're going to find uh a couple different things you're going to have your igniter and uh this temperature sensor here and they're usually going to have two wires connected to them okay so those uh that's kind of how you can identify them we're looking for the single wire which is right back here and usually you can see this porcelain end sticking out as well okay so we're looking for single wire with a porcelain end so that would be the location in this furnace that uh our flame sensor is at and we need to at this point remove it and we want to be careful like I said not once we're removing it not to touch the actual the rod end the sensor end so I'm just going to gently pull off this electrical connection now this is low voltage but like I said we turned the furnace off just to be sure and uh this one has one screw just about none of them are ever in a real easy spot this one isn't too bad so we're just G to undo this screw and uh to get this all down without losing the screw on there we go just pull it down out of there try not to scrape it across everything and I'm going to take this sensor I guess that screw is going to stay in there I'm just going to take it up to a better surface so I can show you the difference between the new and this dirty old one so I just want to show you the difference between the new the new sensor here and the old one you can see this one's it's not really shiny but it's clean this one here you've got some charring some uh a little bit of carbon buildup or whatever on it and uh you can you know definitely see that it needs a little bit of cleaning this one wasn't actually acting up but but uh we're we're just uh taking it out to give it a little clean at the beginning of the Season here okay so I'm going to set down the new one now what we want to do is uh use you want to use something really not not very abrasive on this because we don't want to harm the outer uh surface of that actual sensor so in this case what we're using is a a number four like a a 40 grade steel wool so it's a really fine steel wo uh you don't want to use a sandpaper unless it's you know maybe like a thousand grit wet sandpaper or something uh but even then you just have to be really careful not to uh damage problem with if you damage that you know get some real scratches into there you end up taking the outer surface off and you just uh reduce the life of the sensor itself so I'm just going to take this steel wool and I'm trying again like I said not to touch it with my fingers I'm just giving it a little bit of a cleaning here now we probably won't get all of the black Char that's on it off and I don't know I hope the light's all right here for you to see but just giving it a little shine not really a shine but just getting off any chunks you can kind of feel when you start there's almost a little bit of grit or uh residual uh Char on there once you get it shined up you can tell that it's much smoother shinier or not shinier but just smoother okay so there we are now like I said we we aren't getting it completely uh shiny or uh clean looking like this one but we're just getting off any any uh Char that will actually remove off there to help it uh sense the flame better Okay so we've got that all down now it's just a matter of putting it back in there and again we're just being careful not to scrape it across everything just going to stick it up in that location that it was see if I can get the screw started here with my fingers so it's not real difficult to do there's no point in paying someone to come and do it when you can do it yourself this is a gas furnace of course to be real honest I don't know if a propane one would have the same setup I guess it natur I guess it could have the same setup but this one here is natural gas so we've got that in there and tightened up now I've just got to put the connection back on just like that just make sure it's pushed on all the way and then uh what we'll do is uh turn the furnace switch back on and uh cycle the furnace through and make sure that it actually does fire up and stay stay running so that would be kind of your test to do when you're all finished um I'm not going to do that here today because like I said we weren't actually having a problem at the time we're just doing this as a preventative maintenance but uh if you if you do come home or you happen to be home and you can hear your furnace cycling this would be the first thing that I would check uh because as long as you can see that it's actually is lighting the flame and the burners are lighting but it keeps shutting itself down before it actually comes on and heats the house up then this would be the first thing that I would check um this homeowner actually has a spare one on hand just in case they aren't terribly expensive I'm going to guess that it's probably under $30 or around 30 bucks um so you know even to have a spare one on hand you hate to uh have it actually uh quit working all together and uh you know it's a Sunday or something you can't get one and it's 40 below outside so uh so you know he just just has it on hand so anyways uh that's really all you need to do with that uh once you're done like I said turn the power back on put our cover back in position and uh do a test and you should be good so I'm glad that you're able to watch our video or find it here on YouTube uh we have many other videos uh on our YouTube channel uh you can go on there and check them out and if you want to can subscribe to our Channel and then you'll get some notification every time we post something up new you can also check our website at house-improvements.com and there we have articles and uh you know some links to the videos and different things as well and also watch us on Twitter and Facebook thanks a lothi I'm Shannon from H improvements.com today I want to show you how to clean your furnace flame sensor flame sensor is a fairly simple looking little piece of equipment um you don't want to touch this this rod end so that's why I'm being careful with it basically it has a wire connector area on the one end it's going to have a plate here with a bolt or maybe even two screws through it to hold it into the furnace and then it's got this porcelain piece in here and then this Long Rod basically what this does is as your furnace uh uh gas valve turns on allows gas to come in your igniter ignites that gas and it starts to Flame and burn for a few seconds this sensor here is sensing whether there's a a good flame there whether there is a flame at all or whether the valve is just allowing gas to to uh spew into your house this sensor doesn't sense that there's a flame there or the heat there I guess uh what it does is shut your furnace down so what your furnace would do then and a and a symptom you might find is that uh you can hear your furnace cycling you know two or three times in a row where it'll it'll light and uh you can hear the fan and everything turn on and it'll burn for a few minutes and then shut itself down not even a few minutes maybe 1 minute and it shuts itself down and then maybe 2 3 minutes later it'll do the same thing and it might different furnaces are a little different but it might do that three or four times in a row and if that sensor is sensing there isn't a flame there after that two or three times that it tries to do it it actually will shut your furnace down usually for a period of time uh maybe up to an hour or two hours before it tries that cycle again and it's a safety measure just to be sure that you are igniting the gas and it isn't just uh spewing into your house so um the uh the common problem is though that these sensors get dirty and they don't properly sense that there is a flame there even though it's there and they'll shut your furnace down because they don't don't think that it's there so so they need some periodic cleaning I'd recommend uh probably beginning of every season or the end of every season whichever way you want to do it um just try to remember to do it so what you want to do is uh take the main cover off the front of your furnace and uh before this what we did was actually turned the furnace the power off get this behind me here we turned the actual power off to the furnace to be sure that uh it won't cut in on us um now we need to locate our uh our sensor if you look up on this now every furnace is going to be a little bit different sometimes they're right down here near the burners uh this one happens to be up top where the these burners are you're going to find uh a couple different things you're going to have your igniter and uh this temperature sensor here and they're usually going to have two wires connected to them okay so those uh that's kind of how you can identify them we're looking for the single wire which is right back here and usually you can see this porcelain end sticking out as well okay so we're looking for single wire with a porcelain end so that would be the location in this furnace that uh our flame sensor is at and we need to at this point remove it and we want to be careful like I said not once we're removing it not to touch the actual the rod end the sensor end so I'm just going to gently pull off this electrical connection now this is low voltage but like I said we turned the furnace off just to be sure and uh this one has one screw just about none of them are ever in a real easy spot this one isn't too bad so we're just G to undo this screw and uh to get this all down without losing the screw on there we go just pull it down out of there try not to scrape it across everything and I'm going to take this sensor I guess that screw is going to stay in there I'm just going to take it up to a better surface so I can show you the difference between the new and this dirty old one so I just want to show you the difference between the new the new sensor here and the old one you can see this one's it's not really shiny but it's clean this one here you've got some charring some uh a little bit of carbon buildup or whatever on it and uh you can you know definitely see that it needs a little bit of cleaning this one wasn't actually acting up but but uh we're we're just uh taking it out to give it a little clean at the beginning of the Season here okay so I'm going to set down the new one now what we want to do is uh use you want to use something really not not very abrasive on this because we don't want to harm the outer uh surface of that actual sensor so in this case what we're using is a a number four like a a 40 grade steel wool so it's a really fine steel wo uh you don't want to use a sandpaper unless it's you know maybe like a thousand grit wet sandpaper or something uh but even then you just have to be really careful not to uh damage problem with if you damage that you know get some real scratches into there you end up taking the outer surface off and you just uh reduce the life of the sensor itself so I'm just going to take this steel wool and I'm trying again like I said not to touch it with my fingers I'm just giving it a little bit of a cleaning here now we probably won't get all of the black Char that's on it off and I don't know I hope the light's all right here for you to see but just giving it a little shine not really a shine but just getting off any chunks you can kind of feel when you start there's almost a little bit of grit or uh residual uh Char on there once you get it shined up you can tell that it's much smoother shinier or not shinier but just smoother okay so there we are now like I said we we aren't getting it completely uh shiny or uh clean looking like this one but we're just getting off any any uh Char that will actually remove off there to help it uh sense the flame better Okay so we've got that all down now it's just a matter of putting it back in there and again we're just being careful not to scrape it across everything just going to stick it up in that location that it was see if I can get the screw started here with my fingers so it's not real difficult to do there's no point in paying someone to come and do it when you can do it yourself this is a gas furnace of course to be real honest I don't know if a propane one would have the same setup I guess it natur I guess it could have the same setup but this one here is natural gas so we've got that in there and tightened up now I've just got to put the connection back on just like that just make sure it's pushed on all the way and then uh what we'll do is uh turn the furnace switch back on and uh cycle the furnace through and make sure that it actually does fire up and stay stay running so that would be kind of your test to do when you're all finished um I'm not going to do that here today because like I said we weren't actually having a problem at the time we're just doing this as a preventative maintenance but uh if you if you do come home or you happen to be home and you can hear your furnace cycling this would be the first thing that I would check uh because as long as you can see that it's actually is lighting the flame and the burners are lighting but it keeps shutting itself down before it actually comes on and heats the house up then this would be the first thing that I would check um this homeowner actually has a spare one on hand just in case they aren't terribly expensive I'm going to guess that it's probably under $30 or around 30 bucks um so you know even to have a spare one on hand you hate to uh have it actually uh quit working all together and uh you know it's a Sunday or something you can't get one and it's 40 below outside so uh so you know he just just has it on hand so anyways uh that's really all you need to do with that uh once you're done like I said turn the power back on put our cover back in position and uh do a test and you should be good so I'm glad that you're able to watch our video or find it here on YouTube uh we have many other videos uh on our YouTube channel uh you can go on there and check them out and if you want to can subscribe to our Channel and then you'll get some notification every time we post something up new you can also check our website at house-improvements.com and there we have articles and uh you know some links to the videos and different things as well and also watch us on Twitter and Facebook thanks a lot\n"