Your heater hasn’t acted up in a bit. Repairs have been kept to a minimum, your maintenance goes on as planned, but there’s one type of repair that most homeowners never see coming: your furnace’s board suddenly reversing its polarity of incoming power.
It sounds odd, because it is odd. It’s not a common heater repair in Shreveport, LA by a long shot, but it happens. Today, we’re going to talk about what it is, how it impacts your furnace, and how we can fix it.
A Polarizing Problem
Electricity has polarity, much like magnets do. Just like you have a positive magnet (one that pulls) and a negative magnet (one that forces itself away from another magnet), you also have positive and negative electrons.
The wires in your furnace are set up specifically. You have three wires connected to your furnace. One is neutral, so we won’t cover that, but the other two are “hot wires.” These carry electricity from one place to another.
This isn’t a problem for everyone, however, because a 240V connection is what’s called polarity agnostic. But a 120V connection, which you would have going to a furnace in an RV or a mobile home (even if it’s affixed on cinder blocks and stilts), is susceptible to this polarizing problem.
Why Does It Happen in the First Place?
Usually, this is because it was installed incorrectly. But if it’s a new issue on an older furnace, it could be because the circuit board gets wet or receives a power surge and gets damaged. It usually comes down to the circuit board in one way or another.
The Fix
The polarity of the incoming main power is specific, so when the circuit board malfunctions and flips it, the main fix is to switch it back to its original polarity. There are two ways to do this:
- Replace the Circuit Board: This is the most likely fix. Circuit boards aren’t the most expensive repair that could have come out of this problem.
- Polarized Wires: This can happen during installation, although the problem may not persist for quite some time afterwards. This is when the two “hot wires” of your heater’s connection are installed in reverse. It’s a more intricate problem to solve.
Since this is a very specific problem, it’s not something you can read a blog post about and definitively say “Yep, that’s the problem.” We’ll get our technicians out to you and figure out exactly what the issue is, and get it fixed as soon as possible.
Let’s Help You With That
Heater troubles always throw a wrench in the gears, but we can dig it out and get you back on track with your day. Whatever the problem is, our experienced technicians are at-the-ready to help you out—all it takes is a phone call or filling out our contact form, and we’ll get you sorted as soon as possible.
Contact us today to schedule your heater repair as soon as possible.